Longtime Du Quoin city Commissioner Chuck Genesio says he has no objection to Du Quoin passing ethics codes that lay out how elected officials, department heads and other employees should behave.
Far from opposing those measures, Genesio said, he is one of their biggest boosters.
"I'm all about ethics," Genesio said. "In fact, I run away from things if I think there is going to be conflict."
Genesio became the lightning rod at the June 14 city council meeting, when he and the city's special projects coordinator, Chuck Novak, got into it over the language of some of the conflict of interest measures the city intends to add to its code.
The council rode over Genesio's objections and voted to put the ordinances up for public display for two weeks, the normal route for new ordinances that will then come back to the council two weeks later for final approval. Commissioner Mike Ward voted with Genesio to hold off, but Commissioners Jill Kirkpatrick and Bob Karnes and Mayor Guy Alongi voted to proceed.
Two weeks later (June 28), when Genesio agreed to an interview, he clarified that he objects to some language in these new ordinances. In some cases, the language refers to things that are not in the state's conflict of interest statues, he said. In other cases, he thinks the language makes it easier for supervisory personnel to get rid of employees they don't like.
Genesio said earlier this week that he crafted alternative language for parts of the ordinances that were presented, that if adopted by the rest of the council would take care of his objections. He said he gave them to Alongi to put on Monday's agenda, but the mayor refused, and said he didn't want the council to discuss it because both Kirkpatrick and Novak would be absent from the June 28 meeting for vacations.
Alongi, for his part, said Genesio actually approached City Clerk Ruth Hale with the documents, not the mayor, but that Genesio later called her and said he'd given her the wrong papers, and that he would come back later with the right ones.
Alongi said even if Genesio had brought the correct papers, he would have asked him to hold off until the entire council was present.
The mayor said he has no objection to the council discussing Genesio's proposed changes at a public meeting. He said, however, he personally will never vote in favor of measures that are in any way watered down, and he doubts the council will, either.
"If anything, I'd want them even more stringent," Alongi said.
While Genesio said he has several issues with parts of the ordinances, in conversation he keeps coming back to the language that warns employees that action they take "may" result in conflicts of interest. Genesio sees that language as a loophole that a supervisor could use to dismiss or discipline an employee they don't like.
"It allows for somebody to be targeted," Genesio says. "That's not within the scope of what the ordinance says now."
He finds it particularly troublesome in the area of Du Quoin employees who have businesses on the side, or second jobs. There's nothing in the city code than prevents outside earnings, he says, but he believes the language in the proposed ordinances could make it easier to bring the hammer down on an employee who does.
Genesio said he believes more than half of city employees have secondary sources of income. (The Du Quoin Call was unable to independently verify that). And he said he agrees that employees who work for Du Quoin cannot shirk their responsibilities here in favor of a second job. In his proposed changes to the ordinances, "I changed the language to say, if there is an issue that directly impacts (someone's) work performance it must be remedied," he said.
Novak, however, said he believes the "may" language in the way the ordinances are currently written serves to protect employees by giving the Ethics Commission some flexibility. The city administration has pledged to form an Ethics Commission to hear complaints or charges brought against employees, department heads or elected officials who are accused of violating the conflict of interest codes.
Both Novak and Alongi say a conflict of interest complaint has never been made in Du Quoin, to the best of their recollection.
Genesio said he objects to be characterized as someone who doesn't support ethics legislation.
"I never had any issue with the ethics or the conflict of commitment (outside earnings)," he said. "I had issue with the wording, I didn't think it was consistent with state law." He said he also thought some of the provisions should have been broken out into separate ordinances, because he didn't like having to vote against a whole ordinance when there was only one part of it he disagreed with.
