Lawsuits could hold key to city leadership

~ Division over Cairo city government predates current bickering.

CAIRO, Ill. -- Most people never give more than a passing thought, if that much, to the structure of local government.

A city picks up the trash, fixes potholes and provides police and fire protection. How political architects designed a city is usually not a subject of conversation.

But in Cairo, it's a different matter. The kind of government that runs this town at the southern tip of Illinois is the subject of intense, angry debate. Finding the correct answer could settle the question of who wins the intense, bitter feud between the city council and the mayor.

The issue, however, is not only subject to debate in the streets. It underlies a series of lawsuits between Mayor Paul Farris and the city council. The lawsuits, some filed just days after Farris took office on May 1, 2003, are dragging slowly through the courts and may not be decided before Cairo voters get a chance to issue a verdict of their own in the April 2007 elections.

Illinois law gives residents several options for organizing cities. In March 1913, the residents of Cairo adopted what is known as a commission form of government. The law makes the commissioners almost partners to the mayor, leaving him with no power to overturn their actions by veto.

Objections to the way commissioners are elected under that law, however, led to a civil rights lawsuit in the 1970s. To settle the lawsuit, city officials and the plaintiffs agreed in 1980 to restructure the government.

Citywide elections of commissioners -- which resulted in a white-dominated government -- gave way to elections based on wards. That change, for the first time, resulted in blacks winning election.

The new government structure looks almost identical to what in Illinois law is known as a city council, or aldermanic, form of government. The aldermanic structure limits the council to legislative decisions and gives the mayor power to block council actions by veto.

"The federal court decree supersedes state statutes," Farris said. "Under the federal court decree, Cairo was redefined into wards. Our legal team's opinion is this is an aldermanic form of government."

A city councilman at the time of the court order, Andy Clarke, and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Preston Ewing, disagree. The court only changed the way commissioners are elected, not which Illinois law governs city operations.

"The consent decree was designed for one thing, to change the form of elections in Cairo to allow minority representation on the council and that is all that it did," Clarke said.

Looking at legal documents doesn't clarify the issue. At the Illinois Secretary of State's office, where cities file their organization papers, Cairo is listed as a commission form of government. City ordinances refer to council members legally as commissioners.

The Illinois Attorney General's office in 1989 took a different stance. The federal consent decree, chief opinion writer Michael Luke wrote, "modified Cairo's commission form of government to a mayor-council form." The letter, however, was advisory and not an official opinion of the legal matters involved, Luke wrote.

The reward for the winner of the struggle is power. If Farris prevails, he has enhanced powers to thwart actions of the city council and run the city on his terms. If the council prevails, the six members gain a much stronger hand in directing the operations of the town.

So far, the only resolution to any of the legal battles has been that Farris can, in order to keep the town operating, appoint temporary officials who will conduct business until the council approves their appointments.

The lawsuits cover big issues, such as the application of the state Open Meetings Act, and smaller ones, such as whether a councilman was paying the proper rate for the city for refuse removal.

And they contain allegations from both sides showing the antagonistic stances taken even during the 2003 election campaign and its immediate aftermath.

For example, the man Farris defeated, James Wilson, resigned after the election and the council passed a series of ordinances reassigning authority over city assets. The Customs House Museum, for example, was turned over to the city library. In one lawsuit, Farris' attorneys said the council "acted with the purpose of limiting the statutory powers of the mayor and financially destroying the city for years to come."

In another lawsuit, Farris claims that when he entered city hall for the first time on May 1, 2003, he found the files in a shambles. Computer files were emptied and software had been removed.

In their court filings, council members argue that Farris has overstepped his authority by attempting to veto their resolutions, violated the Open Meetings Act by moving the location of the council sessions and violated their rights as public officials by ordering police to lock City Hall to keep them out.

Dramatic confrontations are common whenever the mayor and council members meet. Recent meetings have taken on an even angrier tone, however, as Farris used police to search audience members and clear the room when he decides a meeting is over.

One of the key powers Farris has if the city uses an aldermanic form of government is a veto. If the city is a commission form of government, he has no authority to overturn a council action.

On Jan. 24, Farris announced two vetoes. But he denied the council the chance to overturn those decisions, a power the council has in an aldermanic government.

Both sides in the conflict seem determined to not get along. The result has been stalemate, such as the council refusal last week to consider taking out a loan to keep city employee health insurance premiums paid. There is also disintegration, with a bank declaring Cairo in default on its bond obligations.

Farris is the first mayor to act as though the council must limit itself to issues he wants to discuss, Clarke said. "He is trying to tilt the rules to suit his own agenda."

Past mayors disagreed with the council, but there were no fundamental breakdowns of city leadership, Clarke said. If the mayor lost a vote, "he sat down and shut the hell up. It was a simple process. The mayor had to lobby the council members to get his agenda passed."

For Farris, lobbying the council would be tantamount to surrender. Instead, he's not only planning to seek re-election, but wants to field a slate of candidates to oppose current council members.

And the opinions of people involved in the 1980 decision are worthless, Farris said. "I don't care what Andy Clarke or Preston Ewing thinks."

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126