Forty minutes is an eternity in Springfield City Council time. That’s how long aldermen spent Tuesday night quarreling over the first item on the evening’s debate agenda, which involved awarding a contract for residential sidewalk construction.
Some aldermen wanted the contract to go to the lowest bidder (John Chernis Concrete Contractors at $126,255.25) while others argued that Chernis’s bid had been disqualified because his bond was miscalculated by $12. But the fact that Chernis’s proposal was $25,000 lower than the next bidder, Sangamo Electric, sparked an argument about whether Chernis deserved a waiver, a not-unheard-of courtesy for reputable bidders.
This scenario allowed some council members to sermonize on integrity (Ward 1’s Frank Edwards, Ward 10’s Bruce Strom), while others preached the gospel of cash savings (Mayor Tim Davlin, Ward 9’s Tom Selinger). It ended in a draw, with the whole batch of bids being scrapped and the process starting over again. Ominous warnings from Sangamo representatives that the next round of bids may be higher failed to scare Davlin, who promised to just shelve the whole project until next year if the bids came in too high.
Forty minutes of debate to save $25,000–that could be called a bargain. It’s the items that are not debated that end up costing the big bucks, like the bill from Husch & Eppenberger council members received in their mailboxes on Monday.
Stamped in big capital letters, it says “PAST DUE” and demands $131,191.83. This sum appears to be in addition to the $47,573.59 already paid to the law firm before Davlin took office (the City Clerk’s office was still trying to confirm past payments at press time).
That brings the total to $178,765.42–or about $25,000 more than the next highest bid on that sidewalk project.
But while the sidewalk project can be re-bid or even delayed , there seems to be no way around this legal bill. Hired in the heat of the moment–when race relations at the Springfield Police Department were at a new low due to the discovery of a black lieutenant (Rickey Davis) being followed by internal affairs investigators and the department’s failure to correct media reports about another black officer (Renatta Frazier) that turned out to be patently false–the Peoria firm of Husch & Eppenberger was supposed to investigate these two incidents and report back to the council within a matter of weeks. The cost was estimated to be $15,000, perhaps because that’s the magic number under which a mayor can sign contracts without seeking council approval.
So the investigation began, but it didn’t stop at $15,000. Now, even if city officials wanted to quibble by refusing to pay for certain activities it might deem irrelevant, Husch & Eppenberger’s billing process prevents that possibility.
For example, on the firm’s first day of investigation, lead attorney Christopher Nichols billed the city for telephone conversations with the city’s corporation counsel Bob Rogers and former mayor Karen Hasara’s chief of staff Brian McFadden as well as former WTAX-AM shock jock Donald “One-Eyed Jack” Jackson. The bill lumps all three phone calls together and charges the city $190 (one hour, at his hourly rate of $190).
Similarly, that same day, attorney SueAnn Billimack talked on the phone to Hasara, Rogers, former SPD legal advisor Bill Workman, and an unidentified State Journal-Register reporter. The bill lumps those calls together and charges the city $210 (1.2 hours at her hourly rate of $175).
If the city had any inclination to question certain items–maybe the time Billimack spent on December 19 listening to audio tapes of Black Guardians’ attorney Courtney Cox on radio chat shows, for example–there is no way to separate that out from the rest of the work she performed that day, namely traveling to Springfield, interviewing “seven additional witnesses,” reviewing personnel files, and watching a video tape of the special City Council meeting regarding the Frazier incident. Billimack’s work that day amounted to 14.7 hours, for which Husch & Eppenberger charged the city $2,572.
Privately, some lawyers who have worked with the city say they prefer a more detailed billing system, where the time spent for each item is specified. But the system used by Husch & Eppenberger is also perfectly acceptable, according to these same attorneys. Nichols didn’t answer requests for comment, but his secretary confirmed that this method is the standard for the labor law section of the firm, unless a client specifically requests detailed billing.
The council that spent 40 minutes arguing to save $25,000 probably can’t argue
long enough to save taxpayers from this bill.
This article appears in Jul 3-9, 2003.
