Loyal readers (hi Mom and Dad) may recall that the last “Aldermania” chronicled
a City Council meeting that was so packed with people, Mayor Tim Davlin could
have safely taken a stage dive. It was, according to one official, probably
the most crowded City Council meeting in Springfield history. Still, it wasn’t
so jammed that I would have missed my pal Citizen Sam if he had been there.
Citizen Sam is a watchdog of sorts, not the kind who runs for public office or hosts a cable-access TV show. Citizen Sam has a lucrative career in the kind of business where the dress code apparently requires sharp suits, expensive shoes, and just the right amount of cologne.
So I was surprised the next day when we were chatting on the phone and he started talking about the City Council meeting, prattling on about the entire agenda. How had I missed seeing him there?
“Oh, I wasn’t at the first council meeting,” he said. “I was at the second one–you know, the one over at Saputo’s?”
Sure, everybody knows that a few aldermen adjourn to Saputo’s to have a drink or two after council meetings. What’s wrong with that?
Well, probably nothing. As long as there aren’t four or more and they don’t talk about city business, they aren’t in violation of the Illinois Open Meetings Act–the law designed to ensure that elected officials don’t engage in “secret deliberations and action on matters which, due to their potential impact on the public, properly should be discussed in a public forum,” according to the Illinois Attorney General’s guide to the act.
But Citizen Sam named four council members he saw at the bar, plus a handful of city staffers. He knew a few details of city business that weren’t printed in the newspaper. As a watchdog, he smelled something fowl.
I decided to check it out. Since the August 5 council meeting coincided with the impending departure of our beloved summer intern, whose favorite restaurant happens to be Saputo’s, I took her out to dinner after the meeting. Sure enough, at the bar were four council members and at least a couple of city staffers, along with a businessperson who’d just had an ordinance passed an hour earlier. I made no attempt whatsoever to eavesdrop on their conversation, and for all I know they might have been discussing the price of tea in China.
“Most of what we talk about is inane bull–,” one alderman later told me. “I
mean, anybody who believes anything’s done over there other than drinking and
acting ignorant is wrong. Nobody has ever asked me for a vote over there. We
just keep telling the same old stories like a bunch of old farts from World
War II.”
Last month, the City Council awarded Ujima Management Consultants, Inc., a contract to coordinate a federal grant program for the Springfield Police Department. Ujima is a small business–so small, in fact, it’s essentially one man, Robert Blackwell.
Blackwell holds a master’s degree in social work and was executive director of the Springfield Housing Authority in the early 1990s. Under the previous mayor’s administration, he was appointed to the Race Relations Task Force and hired to train facilitators in the city-sponsored “study circles” on race. He has been awarded the SPD grant coordination contract annually for the past six years. Obviously, the man knows his way around City Hall.
So it’s ironic that, just a few weeks later, he was given an “escort service” around the building–whether he wanted one or not.
According to a notice sent by a CWLP official to the receptionists at Municipal Center East last Wednesday, “Robert Blackwell is to be escorted from the lobby by the person he comes to MCE to visit, and back to the lobby afterwards.”
A follow-up e-mail from the Chief of Police Don Kliment to top police officials reinforced that message: “Robert Blackwell is not to be in the Municipal Center East without an escort.”
But why? What had this mild-mannered man done to deserve this kind of attention?
Blackwell, a 50-year-old African-American, had visited the building the previous day to meet with the city’s director of community relations regarding study circles and with a police official about the grant. While there, he stopped in to see Letitia Dewith-Anderson, Mayor Tim Davlin’s assistant, who was at that time still surrounded by controversy regarding the transition team’s recommendation to change her job title. Dewith-Anderson was on her way to lunch, so Blackwell walked her outside.
After their chat, Blackwell decided he wanted to speak privately with Davlin “to give him some perspective on how I think this thing is playing out.” So he went back inside to schedule an appointment. He recalls joking with the mayor’s secretary and emphasizing he didn’t need an in-person appointment–he would be happy to simply talk to Davlin via phone.
A day later, Blackwell started hearing rumors that he had been “banned” from City Hall.
“I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t want to believe it,” he says. When people brought him copies of the memo and the SPD e-mail, he was stunned.
“It shocked me that I was judged to be a security risk,” he says. “I could just see one large arm movement and I’m being taken down behind somebody’s errant perception of my disposition.”
He called his alderman, Bruce Strom, who in turn called the mayor. Davlin “alluded to aggressive and threatening phone calls” he had received, but Strom told him this must be a case of mistaken identity. “It just surprises me that this would happen,” Strom says. “I understand that people like the mayor need to screen who they speak to and deal with, but I find it hard to believe that Bob Blackwell had ever done anything that could be considered a threat.”
A few days and several phone calls later–including one from the mayor to Blackwell–the matter seems to be resolved. Kliment, who told Blackwell he had received a “directive” to issue the first e-mail, has issued another e-mail explaining the mistaken identity and specifying that Blackwell is free to visit anyone in City Hall without an escort and “is to be treated with the utmost respect.”
But still, no one on or off the record has been able to explain what connected Blackwell to the threatening phone calls in the first place.
Blackwell credits Strom and Dewith-Anderson for defusing a situation that was, for him, “completely alarming.” They gave Davlin a quick education on Blackwell’s background.
“Letitia’s probably kept me and the city out of litigation, because I was
prepared to do whatever I had to do,” Blackwell says. The fact that his “banning”
occurred amid the controversy about her position only emphasizes the need for
her presence in city hall, he says. “That’s the essence of diversity–it’s not
just diversity of color; it’s diversity of thought,” Blackwell says. “We can’t
afford to be polarized in this little town. That’s why I went to see the mayor
in the first place.”
This article appears in Aug 7-13, 2003.
