In another shift away from the practices of the past two years, the Niles-Maine District Library Board of Trustees severed its relationship with a lawyer whose work for the library sparked intense discord among members of the previously divided board.
Attorney Yvette Heintzelman had worked for the library as a labor attorney and on other matters since October 2021, according to library records. Board members at their June 21 meeting voted to stop employing Heintzelman and retain her colleague Lisa Callaway for continued work on general labor matters .
A letter dated June 21 and addressed to Heintzelman stated that the library was terminating her working relationship with the institution.
Heintzelman’s work with the library, as an independent attorney and with a handful of different legal firms, raised the hackles of some library trustees, particularly current board president Becky Keane.
Keane, current board Secretary Patti Rozanski, board Vice President Jason Trunco, board Treasurer Roberto Botello and Trustee Umair Qadeer now have a majority on the previously deadlocked board. The new majority is moving to undo many of their predecessors’ changes, including lifting a 19-month hiring freeze and cleaning house among the library’s lawyers.
Board member and former president Carolyn Drblik objected to the timing of the termination, which was formally dated May 17, and asked how the board could back-approve the move.
Drblik presided over the move to retain Heintzelman near the beginning of her tenure as board president.
Drblik then asked to split the motion to terminate Heintzelman and retain Callaway into two separate motions, saying another library attorney, Dennis Walsh, had advised her to do so.
“Why are we using an attorney to ask basic questions?” Trunco asked. “We don’t need attorneys for you to understand how to be on a board after being here for almost six years.”
Drblik retorted that the board had never combined two actions into one motion before.
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“Carolyn, there are a lot of things you’ve done over the last two years that are embarrassing,” Trunco said.
“If we’re terminating Yvette Heintzelman as our attorney then who will represent us as she did?” Drblik asked.
Keane said the library had two other attorneys to represent and advise the institution.
“The motion says retain Lisa Callaway to provide legal representation with respect to certain general labor and employment matters,” Executive Director Cyndi Rademacher said. “That’s pretty clear.”
Drblik was not satisfied.
“There are no general labor and employment matters listed in Callaway’s terms of engagement,” she said. “We don’t even identify her as the attorney for union negotiations.”
“I think it’s understood that she is doing the negotiations for the union,” Keane said.
“But it should be specified, Becky,” board member Suzanne Schoenfeldt said in a rare interjection.
The board then moved on to a vote, agreeing in a 5-2 split to terminate Heintzelman’s employment with the library. Drblik and Schoenfeldt abstained.
The library’s break with Heintzelman marks a sharp turn away from the operating norms under Drblik’s leadership.
Drblik instituted a policy of having lawyers review all Freedom of Information requests made to the library alongside a second policy that all inquiries from the news media take the form of Freedom of Information requests.
Simultaneously, the library’s staff unionized in what they said was a response to changes in the institution’s elected leadership and began bargaining for recognition and their first contract.
These were two factors that led the library’s legal spending to skyrocket to almost $137,000 annually from a previous level of about $8,000.
Eventually, Keane filed a complaint about Heintzelman with the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, which the commission later dismissed.
During that period, Keane had also questioned why the library was paying Heintzelman when Heintzelman was not replying to her email inquiries.
Emails between Keane and Drblik obtained in a Freedom of Information request by Pioneer Press show a history of conflict between the two officials.
Records show that Drblik called Keane’s conduct “an insult to the position of a trustee,” while Keane occasionally accused Drblik of lying during acrimonious meetings punctuated by shouting matches.