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TO: Mayor Richard C. Irvin
Honorable Members of the City Council
FROM: Richard J. Veenstra
Corporation Counsel
DATE: June 6, 2019
SUBJECT:
An ordinance restating or defining the duties and functions of the corporation counsel, the assistant corporation counsels, and the Law Department, in general.
PURPOSE:
To clarify the function and duties of the Law Department and its members.
BACKGROUND:
In the summer of 2017, the City Council considered a significant realignment and reorganization of many of the City departments. Because there were no significant changes to the Law Department at the time, the Council was only asked to make minor changes proposed to the portions of the City Code that define the duties of the corporation counsel and the Law Department.
Unfortunately, Section 2-261, which provides for the general duties of the corporation counsel consists entirely of language originally codified in 1941 that used to be divided between the corporation counsel and the city attorney before the positions were consolidated in the 1990s.
Section 2-285, which defines the functions of the Law Department was adopted in 1991. The Council did amend Section 2-285 in 2017, but only to reflect the addition of a community-based prosecutor to the departmental staff. Despite the Law Department's extensive involvement in the City's administrative hearing program and risk management functions, the Code is silent as to these significant duties.
DISCUSSION:
Since the corporation counsel and assistant corporation counsel positions were both vacant when the Council last visited these Code provisions, there were no in-house attorneys available to provide assistance in crafting changes to better reflect the duties of the corporation counsel, the assistant corporation counsel, or even the Law Department as a whole in the second largest city in Illinois.
The proposal replaces existing Sections 2-261 and 2-285 with more modern language that better embraces all of the...
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