To the Editor:
At a special meeting called last Thursday the County Board voted to discharge County Administrator Doug Hulme and IT Director Rob Dorman.
The vote was not unanimous and was over my objection. I objected for the sole reason that I did not think it was fair or legal to discharge either person without some semblance of fairness and due process. The procedure I suggested is the required and standard procedure that must be used in employee disciplinary matters.
The ordinance under which the County Board chose to operate specifically stated that the Administrator and Director could only be discharged with the consent of the County Board AND the County Board Chairman.
After consulting with the County HR and Compliance officers, I was told that due process must be observed and a fair hearing be conducted.
Pursuant to that professional advice, I had suspended Hulme and Dorman pending a due process investigation. I had already contacted an objective and highly respected legal professional from Missouri to conduct a quick but fair review of what the prior investigation had found.
The prior investigation began when the Democrat State’s Attorney formed a highly political “task force” that conducted much publicized “raids” on some county offices (not mine). The raids were just accidently accompanied by TV stations who presumably had advance knowledge of the police activity.
Chief Judge Dave Hylla quickly recognized the political nature of what was happening and all circuit judges recused themselves and asked the Illinois Supreme Court to assign an objective out-of-circuit Judge to the case.
Mt. Vernon Judge Jerry Crisel removed Gibbons from the prosecution of the case and appointed Democrat Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office as prosecutor.
Very soon after the "raid," I, personally, and with my permission, my attorney, gave interviews to the investigating officers. During those interviews, neither of us imposed time limits or subject limitations and we both answered all questions. I did not know the extensive nature of the email searches.
After an exhaustive two and a half year investigation, generating over 3,000 pages of reports, nearly a dozen search warrants, a court-ordered eavesdrop and months of review by the Attorney General, the Democrat Attorney General decided that no charges were to be filed because there was “insufficient evidence” upon which to base charges.
Most of the original allegations of wrong-doing were immediately discounted and dismissed by the investigators. However, the investigators did pursue the issue of looking into the emails of county employees.
My attorney and I had both referred the investigators to the County Personnel Handbook (that every employee, including circuit judges, signed) stating, in part (pages 43-46 of the handbook) that the computer system, and all emails, are county property and subject to search by county administrators. This policy is common throughout government offices and all private businesses in the country.
Hulme and Dorman did not participate in investigation interviews, pursuant to advice of counsel, and we have never heard from them concerning the allegations. In my own review of the allegations, I was told, however, that there was preexisting circumstantial and anecdotal evidence of corruption, specifically political fundraising, as a reason for the email searches. The investigators told me that the term “fundraising” was one of the search terms used by Hulme.
Another question the investigators had was an alleged attempt to access the Auditor’s financial software by Dorman. I knew nothing of this alleged attempt.
In the spring of 2019, the County Board passed a resolution that the County Board was entitled to look at the books held in secret by the Democrat auditor. Upon my notifying the auditor that we were about to access the county’s financial records, he sued the County Board and me.
The result of that lawsuit was that both the County Board, the County Board Chairman and the pubic were entitled to see these records.
Before all this, Doug Hulme’s record as county administrator was unblemished. In his three years of service to the taxpayers, Hulme secured budgets reduced taxes by $1.8 million the first year, and did not raise them in years two and three. These budgets greatly increased support for law enforcement, required county employees to clock in to work, and many other fine reforms.
Dorman’s IT Department updated our antiquated computer systems, standardized computer buying that saves taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, began a program to greatly reduce the number of computer printers, and made available to elected officials a program called Intradyne.
Intradyne allows elected officials to secure their own email servers and archives. IT employees were working on a proposal to purchase this software before any allegations of reading emails surfaced.
Before the County Board meeting, I went to the Sheriff’s office and reviewed the investigation except for the eavesdrop. I was reliably informed, by at least three lawyers with extensive experience in obtaining and using eavesdrops, that listening to such matters was illegal and that any use of the eavesdrop absent a court order after a hearing in which the subject of the eavesdrop had a right to be heard, was illegal.
After reviewing the information at the Sheriff’s office, I placed both Hulme and Dorman on a leave of absence pending an objective investigation by a neutral professional. It was my hope that both sides in this dispute could be heard, or that, at least, the employees would be given a right to counsel, an opportunity to respond to specific allegations, and a right to have their side, if any, of the dispute, to be presented.
On Thursday night, without any notice of the allegations against them, Hulme and Dorman were terminated over my objection. Gibbons, the State’s Attorney who had already been removed from the case, told the County Board that “and” means “or” and that neither employee had the right to consult with an attorney or to have an attorney present. It was my thought that after a two and a half year investigation, with volumes of data collected, there was no need to rush to judgment or to deny due process and fundamental fairness to these employees.
If it took the Illinois Attorney General’s office so long to evaluate the evidence, why did we have to act in 24 hours? The County Board is supposed to be a “deliberative body.” I do not think it was last week.
The taxpayers will likely now have to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars defending lawsuits and perhaps paying judgments. The County Board could easily have waited a few weeks, done justice and acted deliberately.
I do not know if Doug Hulme and Rob Dorman abused their offices or not. I do not know if the ultimate outcome would have been the same if we acted deliberately and with justice in mind.
I do know that our country has a deeply ingrained sense of due process and fundamental fairness. That is what was terminated last Thursday, along with Hulme and Dorman.
County Board Chairman Kurt Prenzler