Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Sometimes you get the idea that public comment at Springfield city council meetings should be renamed the “employee discipline appeals board.”
Many of the commenters addressed a suspension meted out to a public works employee who used the N-word at work, while a department head departed his job after the mayor publicly upbraided him for his social media posts about Charlie Kirk.
“You guys know that the N-word is wrong, right?” asked commenter Ken Pacha. “You wouldn’t say it in private. You wouldn’t say it to your friends. You wouldn’t say it to a random stranger. So, if you work for the city, why would you say it? Why would you say it at work? Semms confusing to me.”
“I don’t want to be emotional up here, but I am really angry at this point,” said Ald. Lakeisha Purchase through tears. “What we are seeing going on in our country, what I see going on back home (in Maywood, near Broadview) and we see that? To see someone within our departments using that word? It’s bullshit.”
Ald. Jennifer Notariano added, “It sounds like we don’t have a zero-tolerance policy for racism, but we certainly should.”
The employee who used the N-word at work was not a director. The employee who appeared to cheer on the Kirk assassination, despite not doing so in an official city capacity, is a director.
“Directors are double-exempt,” Mayor Misty Buscher explained after the meeting. “They’re different than employees that have protections, whether it’s just Civil Service or through their union contract.” And city information systems director Jayme Sullivan, as do all department heads, serve at the pleasure of the mayor. And city chief of staff Billy Fleischli reminded WTAX News Sullivan was never disciplined; he quit.
