Keeping our eye on the ball in Davenport

Flurry of court actions surrounding the controversial settlements with former city employees shouldn't distract us from the most important questions.

Given the flurry of legal activity over the past week, I can certainly understand why the Davenport City Council wanted to keep the Corri Spiegel controversy under wraps.

The new filings aren’t a good look for City Hall.

Here are some of the highlights:

• The city is asking a judge to determine whether a letter Spiegel sent to the city that describes alleged harassment perpetrated against her, along with a demand for money, is a confidential record. And, if it is, whether the city has a right to release it. The city agreed last October to pay Spiegel $1.6 million. The defendant in the city’s action is David Sidran, a local man who’s worked diligently to get City Hall to disclose information about this and other settlements, as well as the downtown building collapse last year.

• Two former employees who say they were harassed by elected officials, and were paid about $300,000 between them, allege in a new court filing they were wronged when the city released similar information about them that they’d been told would be kept confidential. The two have threatened to sue.

• The city, which acknowledges the threat of lawsuits, also admits that despite getting document requests concerning the Spiegel matter since November, including from Sidran, it’s kept the Spiegel letter under wraps, initially believing it to be confidential information. The court filing by the two former employees, Samantha Torres and Tiffany Thorndike, says a city employee has admitted the information concerning them was released in error. And they say the city went to court asking for guidance just two days before a deadline they had given the city to respond to a demand letter, after which they would file suit.

• The city has also filed papers fighting a lawsuit that is being pursued by Allen Dierckx, another local man who has asked the court, in part, to declare the settlements with the three former employees void and order the city to undertake efforts to recoup the money.

If this is hard to follow, I understand. There are a lot of legal issues that surround this case, but they shouldn’t obscure the most important questions: What was the nature of the alleged harassment, and who committed it? Were the allegations true, and were the payments warranted? The documents related to Torres and Thorndike contained some of the allegations, but we still are almost completely in the dark when it comes to the complaints made by Spiegel.

In its pre-Thanksgiving statement, the city council said she’d been harassed by multiple elected officials over a period of eight years, but only identified Derek Cornette, the ex-alderman who was ousted last September. We also know the amount of money she was paid far exceeded the amount paid to Torres and Thorndike.

Some people in Davenport don’t believe Spiegel should have received such a large settlement. I’ve not weighed in on this question. Until we know the nature of the allegations, none of us can be sure whether the city’s decision to pay her $1.6 million was necessary or wise. The city council said in its statement this would be cheaper than losing a lawsuit but haven’t explained why they believe this.

Which is why I have tried to keep my focus on the Davenport City Council.

Let’s be clear: The inappropriate behavior the city council acknowledged was allegedly perpetrated by elected officials. And it was elected officials, who behind closed doors, agreed to payments of nearly $2 million in exchange for promises the three employees wouldn’t pursue further action.

Well, as you can see, the court is fully involved now. Still, we haven’t gotten to the fundamental truth behind this mess. And as far as I can tell, the city council, the elected officials, are making good on their unfortunate promise not to provide the public with any further answers.

I’ll reiterate: Amid the legal maneuvers, we ought not lose sight of the central elements of this story:

A.      Elected officials are accused of harassing three former city employees.

B.      We know very little about the nature of the alleged harassment of Spiegel and who committed it. And whether any other members of the council knew anything about it at the time, and what, if anything they did in response.

C.       Our elected officials chose, behind closed doors, to try to make this go away by forking over $1.9 million.

D.      Then they tried to hide it.

Given A, B and C, I can understand why a politician would want to do D. Especially with an Election Day looming. But I hope they don’t get away with it. We still need to know the truth behind all of this. It’s our money. And it is in our name that they have been doing business.

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