Former Springfield mayor Jim Langfelder and current Mayor Misty Buscher disregarded more than 100 years of precedent when they bypassed Lincoln Library’s board of trustees for advice in the hiring and firing of the past two library directors.
That’s according to a statement from the board, an unpaid, advisory panel appointed by the mayor. A board member read the statement to the City Council on July 18.
The trend of mayors ignoring the board’s bylaws and city code, both of which call for the board to be involved in interviews, hirings and firings of directors, “is not how libraries are run elsewhere, and it is not how Lincoln Library was managed for its first 130 years,” the statement said.
“Rather, these are dangerous precedents that will undoubtedly make it more difficult to attract quality candidates to fill this vacancy,” the statement said, calling out Langfelder and Buscher for a “pattern of disrespect and disregard for the board.”
“The position of library director should not be a political one,” the board said. The job “now seems to be intrinsically linked to the mayor’s office in a way that prevents us from attracting the innovative, passionate candidates that we need to make Lincoln Library the gem it deserves to be,” the board said.
Langfelder, who was defeated by Buscher in the April 4 election as he attempted to win a third four-year term, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the statement.
Former library director Rochelle Hartman told Illinois Times that Langfelder said he wanted to “go in a different direction” when he fired her.
When asked to elaborate, Langfelder later issued a written statement that said in part: “It was becoming evident that more quality and qualified staff were leaving the library. This, along with previously documented employee issues, required change before we lost other employees.”
Langfelder’s spokeswoman, Julia Frevert, said the “previously documented employee issues” involved “employee and union concerns” communicated to the city’s human resources department “due to management issues that did involve Hartman.”
Buscher never said why she terminated Langfelder appointee Summer Beck-Griffith in mid-May. Buscher didn’t respond to the statement when it was read July 18.
When Illinois Times requested an interview with Buscher July 20, her spokesperson, Haley Wilson, said in an email that Buscher would be unavailable for interviews for several days because the city was “rapidly approaching our deadline” to request federal funding to help the city recover from the late June storm.
Wilson said the Buscher administration is “looking forward to discussions” between Interim Library Director Kathryn Harris and the board “to place a permanent director at the Lincoln Library.”
What those discussions would entail remains unclear.
When asked whether Buscher would have time for an interview July 24 and beyond, Wilson didn’t respond directly and asked for a list of interview questions. Illinois Times submitted a list on July 20 but didn’t hear back from Wilson or Buscher.
The board’s statement said board members want city officials to comply with city code and the board’s bylaws by giving the board resumes and cover letters for all applicants for the permanent position, and allowing the board to interview applicants and recommend who should be hired to the mayor and City Council.
The director of Lincoln Library, 326 S. Seventh St., is paid $96,000 annually and oversees a wing of city government with a staff of about 40 and a $5 million annual budget.
According to the board, the trend of the mayor bypassing the board’s advisory role began under Langfelder in 2017 with the hiring of William O’Hearn, who later resigned to take a job at a library in Oregon state, and continued with the hiring of Hartman in August 2019, Hartman’s firing by Langfelder in January 2022, the subsequent hiring of Beck-Griffith by Langfelder and her firing by Buscher in May after less than a year on the job.
Hartman’s departure marked the first time a mayor had fired the library’s director, according to the board, and Beck-Griffith’s firing by Buscher marked the first time a new mayor fired a previous mayor’s appointed library director.
Buscher, who later met with the library board, didn’t elaborate on her reasons for firing Beck-Griffth, who was well-liked by the board and the staff, according to Geoff Pettys, the board member who read the board’s letter to the City Council.
“We were essentially dismissed,” Pettys said. He is a Springfield native and Langfelder appointee who has a master’s degree in library science and works at another library in Springfield.
Pettys said the library director “should not be a political position. You need a long-term strategy. You need to have a vision. You need leadership. You need continuity.”
If the board can’t have a say or formal role in hiring the director, “I don’t know what we do,” Pettys said. “What is our purpose?”
No director in the city’s history had ever been fired by a mayor until 2022, the board said. Since the library began 137 years ago, there have been 12 library directors, with the average term of a director being 15 years between 1886 and 2017, the board said.
Before O’Hearn, Nancy Huntley served as director for 24 years, from 1993 to 2017.
There have been four directors in the past six years.
The board said it studied the public libraries in Bloomington, Decatur, Champaign and Peoria.
“All of them have a layer of insulation that protects them from the political shakeups that come from changes in city administration,” the board’s statement said. “All have boards with the authority and responsibility of hiring and firing the library director.”
Minutes from the board’s Jan. 26 meeting showed that Langfelder and then-City Attorney Jim Zerkle attended, but Langfelder declined to give the board specifics as to the reasons for Hartman’s termination.
Based on the minutes, Zerkle didn’t say why the mayor didn’t seek the board’s advice before firing Hartman.
Langfelder told the board in January that he would be “open to allowing the board to interview prospective directors” going forward. But Langfelder didn’t follow through on that offer before Beck-Griffith was hired, Pettys said.
Pettys, who has been on the board since spring 2021, did research for the letter and found a history of the city underfunding the library – an issue that both Hartman and Beck-Griffth spoke about publicly.
The library had 74 full-time employees in 1992, Pettys said. The total dropped to 63 full-time employees in 2009 and 37 in 2017, he said.
The library’s west side branch at 1251 W. Washington St. and its southeast branch at 2500 South Grand Ave. East closed in 2010. The north branch at 719 North Grand Ave. East closed in 2005.
Illinois Library Association guidelines suggest that a public library serving a community Springfield’s size should have a staff of at least 88, Pettys said.
Pettys and board president Andre Jordan said they would like to see city code changed to give the board more autonomy.
“We definitely would like to have a seat at the table, especially as a starting point,” Jordan said.
Dean Olsen is a senior staff writer at Illinois Times. He can be reached at dolsen@illinoistimes.com, 217-679-7810 or twitter.com/DeanOlsenIT.
This article appears in Repurposing MacMurray Hall.
It doesn’t take a genius to know why Summer Beck-Griffith was canned. Like all city department heads, it is very clear that they serve at the pleasure of the mayor.
It sounds like the so-called library board hasn’t been doing their job if this has gone on for 8 or more years because, until now, they haven’t said squat.
Do any of the so-called board members have any qualifications for the job?
Or are they just professional meeting attendees?
There is a highly qualified professional doing a search for a new director.
Get rid of the board for dereliction of duty and start fresh. See what it will take to break the library off as a separate unit of elected trustees.
At one time, Lincoln Library was a separate line item on the property tax bill. Why did that change?