It was almost like watching a scripted play. Christopher Nichols, a partner in the Peoria law firm Husch & Eppenberger, sat in the front row in the City Council chambers, waiting for his cue to step up to the microphone. He didn’t have to wait long. The agenda raced past so fast you could almost feel a breeze.
Husch & Eppenberger was hired to investigate allegations of discrimination brought by two black Springfield police officers. At the time Nichols and his colleagues were contracted by then-mayor Karen Hasara, the investigation was supposed to last a few weeks and cost no more than $15,000. Ultimately it lasted seven months, and the law firm has billed the city for almost $180,000.
Mayor Tim Davlin and the council members have been grumbling about this bill for so long everybody already knew what everybody else would say, how they would vote, and how the play would end. It was just a matter of opening the curtain, reciting the lines, and dancing through the mock sword fight. The only wee surprise was when Davlin draped from his podium a royal blue T-shirt with the words “Unexpected Bill.”
The ordinance that would pay Husch & Eppenberger another $120,000 on top of the $50,000 already paid was stuck in committee, pending Nichols’ appearance. The council quickly voted it onto the table for final passage.
“This is to increase the Husch & Eppenberger contract up to $170,000,” Davlin announced. “Discussion? Alderman Edwards?
“Yeah, I got discussion,” Frank Edwards said. It was the first comment of the evening from an alderman, and it revealed that their microphones were not on. Whatever else Edwards said was drowned out by a baby crying. ” . . . and I don’t think we should be paying it,” he concluded.
“I believe we have a representative of the law firm here that would like to address that issue,” Davlin said. “You may approach, state your name and address, please.”
Nichols went through his argument, couching the issue as a legal if not moral obligation. The City of Springfield has to pay its bills, he said. Council members responded that the city pays its bills, but only the ones they deem to be legitimate. The aldermen all agreed that this bill, born of the previous administration, was not.
Based on an agreement signed last November by Hasara and Nichols for less than $15,000, the bill had reached at least $47,000 by February. The council then passed an ordinance authorizing a payment of $50,000. Anybody paying attention at that February meeting heard Nichols clearly state that tab would keep running. But who knew it would get close to $200,000?
One person who might have known was Bob Rogers, corporation counsel under the Hasara administration. Nichols said his firm was instructed that “all matters related to our financial arrangements as well as the scope of our engagement were to be dealt with by corporation counsel, specifically Mr. Rogers, and we did that. That was the nature of our engagement. We dealt with him. The bills were sent to him.”
Alderman Frank McNeil reminded Nichols of why the agreement specified $15,000–because any amount less than that magic number did not require approval by the council. McNeil also pointed out that throughout the investigation Nichols’ team reported only to Hasara and Rogers.
Nichols tried giving the council a civics lesson. “There’s a separation of powers in the United States, and this is the way it works. The administration hired us, they signed a contract, we signed that contract . . . ”
“Mr. Nichols, only one thing,” McNeil interrupted. “The powers that are separated is that the mayor can only bind the City Council to $15,000 without council approval. Her contractual liability . . . could only be $15,000 and no more. So if she contracted you for in excess of $15,000, it’s void.”
From the very beginning, everybody has known that no team of attorneys could investigate this mess for $15,000. From the beginning, the real agreement was more like, yeah, you can go over $15,000, but not too much over. From the beginning, though, everyone pretended that $15,000 was a reasonable number and the investigation just happened to get complicated.
Maybe that’s why everybody ignored the statement Nichols made right when he started talking Tuesday night. Responding to whatever Edwards said with his microphone off and the baby crying, Nichols let fly this big spitwad of brutal truth:
“With respect to your comment that it was beyond $15,000, it was always going to be beyond $15,000.”
Always? How did Nichols know that? Who told him? What did they say?
We may never know the answer to these questions. All I know is that Nichols’
statement was one of the two truest of the evening. The other was a slip of
the tongue committed by Edwards: “Ignorance is no excuse for the law.”
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2003.
