Although workplace disputes, such as suits for wrongful dismissal, often reach the courts, they rarely go to trial. For reasons of legal cost, risk aversion and the often mutual desire to avoid bad publicity, parties typically settle.
So it was in the case involving city Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and two of her employees, Ashley Evans and Tiffany Harper. As the Tribune first reported last fall, Evans and Harper accused their boss of misusing taxpayer money and taxpayer-funded staffers, which is a serious charge when you are treasurer of a city with a budget of some $16 billion.
According to a letter from their attorney, obtained by the paper, Evans and Harper alleged that Conyears-Ervin used government workers to perform such tasks as planning her daughter’s birthday party, providing personal security duties and also personal grocery shopping, while also pressuring staffers to hold events in support of her political friends. The letter further alleged that the treasurer tried to force BMO Harris — a bank holding city deposits — to issue a mortgage tied to the building that houses the aldermanic office for Conyears-Ervin’s husband, Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th.
Evans and Harper said they were fired when they blew the whistle. Conyears-Ervin denied any misuse of taxpayer money. The whole business settled with a $100,000 payment to the ex-employees of the city of Chicago.
But after all of this came to light, investigators with the Chicago inspector general’s office reportedly seized computers and documents from Conyears-Ervin’s office as part of a possible misconduct investigation, which surely seems merited by these charges.
Fast forward and Conyears-Ervin is running for Congress, challenging longtime U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, who is in his 14th term representing the 7th District, and candidate Kina Collins. When the letters and the charges against Conyears-Ervin have been brought up by reporters, the treasurer typically has, in essence, tried to close down questions by saying that the case is settled and therefore in the past and that she now has hired an experienced team and revamped her office.
She told WLS-Ch. 7 that the charges were “absurd.” And she told Politico that “the hard-working families of this district have more important issues to address.”
None of this is adequate or even logical. Revamping the office implies a need to do so, which implies there was a problem in the first place, which runs counter to Conyears-Ervin’s denials. If nothing was wrong, why were changes needed? If something was wrong, why not say so in such a way that the voters in the Democratic primary have the full information?
Don’t expect to hear from Evans or Harper, however much they might like to talk. The Tribune reported that the terms of the settlement agreement actually prohibits them from publicly discussing their “negative experiences” in the city treasurer’s office, a highly unusual set of terms in city governance that certainly puts the word “gag” next to “order.”
We’d have liked to see Evans and Harper freed from that obligation even if their old boss was not running for Congress.
But, in fact, she is running for Congress and, since the people making the allegations apparently can’t talk freely, that puts all the more obligation on this candidate to explain herself fully to the voters.
She thinks they’ll just be impressed with her biography, rising from humble roots on Chicago’s South Side.
For sure. But honesty and openness about her time in a different public office matter, too.
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