At March 13’s Committee of the Whole meeting, Alderwoman Jennifer Notariano of Ward 6 offered a proposal to publicize the City of Springfield’s 1987 federal consent decree.
The consent decree, which resulted from the landmark McNeil v. City of Springfield, was the basis for the modern council of alders in Springfield. As part of the outcome of that case, the federal district court for Central Illinois created a series of guidelines for the city’s rebuilt government to follow in order to better comply with the Voting Rights Act. The contents of the consent decree are separate from city code, yet still inform policymaking decisions in Springfield; it is even referenced as the settlement agreement within the city’s code of ordinances.
In recent months the consent decree has been repeatedly cited by the city’s legal counsel, with one notable case being in the aftermath of the post-election city clerk controversy; at that time Corporation Counsel Greg Moredock warned that proposals in the community for a special election to replace Clerk Frank Lesko could not be heeded, as doing so would risk violating specific details of the agreement. Despite this importance, as Notariano observed on Tuesday, the full text of the consent decree is not immediately available to residents.
This, said Moredock, is simply the result of “the city’s perspective on obtaining the consent decree”: the document has been public through the federal government since its filing in 1987, and can be obtained through a FoIA request.
Given the omnipresence of the consent decree in Springfield governance, Ald. Notariano deemed this insufficient. “It’s been a few years since 1987. I think, to keep up with the times– is this something I’m gonna have to propose an ordinance, to get posted to the website?”
Moredock replied to that, clarifying that it is not his office’s position to post documents to the city website. “I’ve reached out to the clerk and the mayor. We haven’t had time since your request to do it — so, the three of us need to meet about it.”
Nothing in the corpus of the law prevents the city from hosting the document, he explained.
Alderwoman Notariano invited objections to publishing the agreement to the city’s webpage. None were shared, but Ward 3 Ald. Roy Williams, Jr. offered that if an ordinance were to be drafted to mandate the agreement’s publication, he would like to be listed as a co-sponsor.
“To save the time of the people FOIAing it if it’s on the website,” said Williams, “that’s the whole purpose of wanting to put it on there.”
