The Jan. 22 edition of Illinois Times included an article by Dean Olsen with an overview of the upcoming city budget. Former Springfield budget director Bill McCarty blames the police and fire contracts for causing a “structural deficit” and pats himself on the back for the work he and former mayor Jim Langfelder did to “rebuild the city” and create “record reserves.”
These may make great talking points for elections, but how this was accomplished needs to be discussed before we go back down the road that McCarty is urging.
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In short, McCarty and Langfelder balanced their budgets by eroding public safety. Under them, the Springfield Police Department hit record lows in recruitment and was forced to lower standards significantly just to attract new recruits. They accomplished this by cramming wages down the throats of our first responders that were vastly lower than those of comparable cities. At the beginning of their administration, Springfield was considered one of the most desirable workplaces for top police and fire recruits – by the end, they were hiring anyone that had a pulse – and still could not attract enough candidates.
So, at a time when the public was demanding higher standards from police, our city was actively lowering standards. This had a dire impact on public safety. With headcounts and skillsets lagging, emergency response times soared. Springfield police officers experienced such a large backlog of calls that it could take two to three hours to respond to active domestic violence calls. And the officers who responded were less capable, less trained and less motivated than at any point in the department’s modern history.
Sound like exaggeration? Consider these numbers: Before McCarty was appointed in 2011, more than 250 candidates were testing to be Springfield police officers. After 10 years of McCarty, less than 40 candidates were testing annually. That meant the police department was forced to hire people that just a decade ago never would be Springfield cops. This was at a time when the public expected higher standards from police.
McCarty also caused delays in vehicle maintenance and procurement. This directly led to police officers being forced to drive vehicles that were unsafe. In one of the more audacious examples, carbon monoxide was found seeping into the interior cabin of police cars due to rusted-out floors, poisoning cops and detainees. This resulted in hospitalizations. The city’s solution? Weld old street signs to the floor of police vehicles.
McCarty and Langfelder, in effect, refused to use the garden hose as their house burnt down – and expect us to congratulate them on their water conservation skills.
The Springfield Police Department has been on an upward trajectory in performance, morale, efficiency and recruitment ever since McCarty and Langfelder left. Since the current police contract went into effect, we have attracted record numbers of lateral hires from other agencies – experienced officers who we don’t have to spend money training to be cops. Morale is up, training is up, and we are – for the first time in over a decade – on a course toward a fully staffed department.
While slashing public services in order to create the appearance of a balanced budget may sound like a good bargain in some wealthy collar-county suburb, Springfield is a real city with real issues. Our police are called out more than 100,000 times per year, and Springfield has one of the highest per-capita crime rates in the state. We need to attract highly skilled professionals to our police department – the kind of person who meets the high standards our residents expect of modern policing, men and women who can be calm and judicious on the street but also capable of responding decisively and correctly when called upon.
We are on the right path, finally. We now have a city administration that actually listens to the concerns of rank-and-file emergency workers and takes the day-to-day management of Springfield seriously. This administration isn’t willing to risk our community’s health and safety out of political ambition or for tidy campaign talking points.
David Amerson is the executive director of the Police Benevolent Labor Committee.
This article appears in February 19-25, 2026.
