Over the past couple of weeks, Smile Politely has posted a couple of articles discussing emails sent by a city secretary scheduling a campaign appearance for Mayor Jerry Schweighart. City Attorney Fred Stavins maintained that the mayor’s secretary’s actions were not “political acts,” in his interpretation, and therefore did not violate city ordinance Sec. 2-107, which prohibits working on a political campaign on city time. Since the city attorney has jurisdiction over local ordinances (and the state’s attorney general said one could appeal to the city prosecutor if one didn’t agree with the city attorney’s interpretation, so that didn’t leave many options), that’s about the end of that road.
Recently, I received copies of additional mayor’s office emails which were in the same vein as the communications discussed above: city employees assisting with campaign-related activities like scheduling appearances, compiling information for interviews, passing along messages about yard signs, etc. If Stavins found no political acts in the original communications at issue, it’s difficult to envision him finding more here.
The emails below are in pdf format.