Bloomington's city manager says he should have looped the mayor in sooner about a growing scandal involving former Assistant Police Chief Paul Williams.
In an interview for WGLT’s Sound Ideas, Jeff Jurgens said Mayor Dan Brady heard about a June traffic stop that's resulted in a lawsuit before there was a chance to brief him.
“I've told the mayor that. I said in retrospect, I could have mentioned something sooner, but honestly, it was just trying to get all the information put together,” he said.
Brady previously expressed frustration with city administration for waiting weeks to inform him of the details surrounding Williams’ alleged conduct and an internal investigation while he was still on the force.
Williams abruptly retired Sept. 2, several weeks after a federal lawsuit was filed claiming he abused power and unlawfully detained two 21-year-olds from Bloomington after Williams observed them parked in an accessible parking spot at a fast-food restaurant in east Bloomington.
“I as the city manager serve as the administrative head, and that means all of the employees report up to me,” Jurgens said. “I, then, am the sole employee of the city council. What that means is, I’ve got to make a lot of employment decisions — we’ve got a lot of employment issues that are always going on. I do try to keep the mayor, obviously, and the city council up to date and informed on all of the various issues… In this case, it was simply a matter of trying to get more information and trying to make sure we had everything together before I brought it to the city council.”
Jurgens said the city quickly launched an investigation into Williams after they learned about the traffic stop. The city has not shared the status of that investigation since Williams filed retirement papers.
Tracking overtime
Williams additionally brought home exorbitant amounts of overtime pay as a police lieutenant. Jurgens was the city’s attorney at that time.
Jurgens said since he’s been in his current role, the city has been trying to cut down on its overtime across all departments, though it’s not always a controllable cost. Public works, for example, worked around the clock in the wake of heavy rain and thunderstorms which damaged the city in August.
As for the police department, staffing a department with around 70,000 calls for service a year can lead to officers putting in extra hours.
“Sometimes with the police department, when you have vacancies, you've got to have overtime. You've got to make sure that we've got people in those positions. So, there's a lot of factors that go into that," Jurgens said.
The state’s police officers' union agreed.
“Overtime is frequently put in headlines like it’s always abusive,” said Illinois Policemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association Executive Director David Amerson. “You can’t have a well-known phenomenon in this country of understaffed police agencies without the correlation of a spike in overtime.
"Manhours have to be filled, and if they can’t be filled by on people on just a shift assignment, then there’s overtime — sometimes forced overtime, sometimes voluntary overtime.”
State law prohibits capping overtime for non-exempt employees, and in Bloomington, some overtime worked by off-duty officers for a private company can be reimbursed to the city, Amerson said.
Amerson said part of the union’s role is to advocate against officers working to the point of fatigue or burnout — but it’s a municipality’s job to monitor payroll abuse. He said higher base pay, which cities often resist while negotiating police contracts, can also result in more overtime in the end.
“They fight us really hard — cities do — and try to keep wages low while you’re in a very competitive marketplace and a job that, right now, people don’t want to do. And then they act shocked when they’re short and then their overtime explodes.”
Jurgens declined to comment on the reasons for Paul Williams’ excessive overtime. He said he could not speak to fiscal years in which he was not city manager.
