Aldermen Reject Mayor's Request For Closed-Door Hiring Discussion

EVANSTON, IL — A proposed closed-door discussion with the recruitment contractor hired by the Evanston City Council to help hire a new city manager was preempted Monday after an aldermen suggested it was inappropriate.

Mayor Steve Hagerty said he wanted aldermen to have their first meeting with GovHR, the Northbrook-based public sector search firm retained by the city earlier this month, in private. He said there would be significant public input later in the process.

"So this is your sole decision to put this into executive session?" 6th Ward Ald. Tom Suffredin asked.

"Yes. I think this is a personnel matter — hiring the city manager," Hagerty said.

Under the Illinois Open Meetings Act, or OMA, public bodies may recess into closed meetings to discuss the appointment of "specific employees" or vacancies on the body itself. It is unclear what exemption, if any, would cover the request from Hagerty, who was determined to have violated the act by the Illinois attorney general's office soon after taking office in 2017 by improperly calling an emergency meeting.

"I don't understand why this can't be done in open session," Suffredin said.

City Clerk Devon Reid suggested there was the potential for an OMA violation if aldermen improperly held an executive session. He also noted the city no longer had a designated OMA officer.

"There's no one to protect at this moment," Reid said.

Ald. Don Wilson, 4th Ward, said it was unfortunate Suffredin had not raised the issue earlier, considering the president of the search firm had come to the meeting and already sat through a City Council meeting for nearly 90 minutes.

"This isn't the time," Wilson said. "It seems to me this would have been more timely before."

"I would have loved to, but we didn't know. It just said 'personnel' until [interim City Manager] Erika [Storlie] sent out an email last night," Suffredin said.

"So you didn't know what it was before?" Wilson asked.

"We didn't know what personnel was. There was no packet," Suffredin said. He said he did not want to delay the search but did not understand why the discussion could not not place in public view.

"If I had known when the agenda went out that we were going to have an executive session discussion about the city manager search before we've had a public discussion I would have brought up the issue immediately," he said.

The city is seeking to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Wally Bobkiewicz last August to take a position as city administrator of Issaquah, Washington. In Evanston's council-manager form of government, the city manager is the only employee aldermen are in charge of hiring and supervising. All other employees report up to the city manager. Suffredin began calling for a public discussion of the future of the city manager position last year, even before Bobkiewicz departed.

"Executive session is a 'may,' it's not a 'must' — particularly when there's no confidentiality and we're not even talking about a person," Suffredin said. "We're talking about a position, which is the CEO of an entire city. It's appropriate to have the public be here for that discussion, especially when we're trying to say that we we're going to be transparent about it. Our first discussion should happen in public. We can later on have executive session when we narrow it down to candidate or if we're talking about specific people."

Ald. Peter Braithwaite, 2nd Ward, emphasized that aldermen do not cast binding votes in closed sessions.

"I don't want anyone to think that somehow we're cooking up something that will eventually not come to the public," Braithwaite said.

"We're making the choice to have this discussion in that room without the public present. If you all want to make that decision, we're going to vote to go into executive session and you can vote 'yes,'" Suffredin responded. "You can do it however you want, it's your vote, your prerogative."

"I think we have discussions — both in public, both in the executive session, on the phone, behind closed doors, conversations take all place," Braithwaite said. "I just want to clear up any thought or air as if we're doing something behind closed doors other than having a conversation that will eventually come before the public."

Ald Judy Fiske, 1st Ward, said the agenda should have specified what the personnel matter was all about.

"I can't open those because I don't know how to open the executive session on my computer, staff will help me work that out. But I do think that the way we discuss it can set up the wrong impression with the public," Fiske said. She recalled closed-door discussions held ahead of the 2009 hiring of Bobkiewicz.

"This is the way that we've done things in the past. We did them correctly, as far as I'm concerned," Fiske said. "I remember those discussions very, very well, especially the initial discussions, and they would not have been appropriate for a public discussion."

Related:
Mayor Steve Hagerty Violated Open Meetings Act: Attorney General's Office
Evanston Ald. Judy Fiske Violated Open Meetings Act: Illinois Attorney General
Mayor Of Seattle Suburb Appoints Bobkiewicz As City Administrator

GovHR has several former high-ranking employees of Evanston's city government on its team, according to its website. Its chief executive officer and co-founder, Joellen Cademartori, is the city's former human resources director and director of administrative services. Former Evanston city attorney Grant Farrar is a senior vice president. And after retiring as Evanston police chief last year, Rich Eddington became a vice president with the firm.

Former Wilmette Village Manager Beth Voorhees is the company's president and other co-founder. According to its proposal to the city, the firm has 11 full-time employees, eight part-time employees and 27 project consultants, and it works exclusively in the public sector.

The former iteration of GovHR, called PAR Group, was responsible for placing Bobkiewicz in Evanston, according to a memo from the city's human resources manager, Jennifer Lin. GovHR's proposal for a $23,500 was the second least expensive proposal of the eight received from potential search firms, and it was approved by a 6-2 vote on Jan. 13. Suffredin and Fleming were the dissenting votes.

Vorhees said there would no additional cost for her to attend a future City Council meeting but she would be unable to attend the next regularly scheduled meeting in person in two weeks. Though no candidates have been identified, that does not necessarily mean confidential discussions do not occur at such an early stage in the search.

"Sometimes the conversation veers into performance discussions about previous city managers, it veers into discussions of potential candidates," Voorhees told aldermen. "It's really hard for me to predict in what direction the conversation might go."

Ald. Cicely Fleming, 9th Ward, asked the law department to make sure that items are properly placed on meeting agendas. She said she would support having an initial public discussion, noting that it had been a "tense time in this city" with many citizens frustrated with the city's regular processes.

"I think we just do ourselves a disservice if we, as Ald. Suffredin says, start out in executive session," Fleming said. Further discussions could be held in closed session, she said, before addressing Voorhees.

"Just to set the parameters and our expectations to you and get your feedback as a professional I think very much should be done in the public so that people can understand from the beginning that we do want to have their input," Fleming said, "and how we came to the decision that we did in terms of giving you guidance for how to run this search for our city."