After an eight-and-a-half-hour appeals hearing that began Tuesday evening (June 23, 2009) to consider Jerry Champagne’s firing, the Van Buren Township Board voted 4-3 against his reinstatement.
It was the board members held over from the past administration that hired Champagne who stuck together to try to get the public safety director’s job back.
Trustee Phil Hart made the motion to reinstate immediately with full back pay, which was seconded by Trustee Jeff Jahr. Treasurer Sharry Budd joined with the third yes vote.
Voting no were Trustee Al Ostrowski, Trustee Denise Partridge, Clerk Leon Wright, and Supervisor Paul White.
The vote was taken about 3:17 a.m. Wednesday and once the crowd of Champage supporters realized they lost, many mobbed the board table to accost board members. There were many uniformed police officers present throughout the evening and early morning hours and the officers inserted themselves between angry residents and board members.
“I hope you all rot in hell,” yelled out one police officer’s wife to the board members. Other voices chanted “Recall, recall.”
The meeting started at 7 p.m. with a disagreement among board members about whether the meeting, which was being cablecast live, should be taped so it could be cablecast several times until the meeting minutes were approved.
Supervisor Paul White said he had sent memos to board members about whether the appeals session should be cablecast live and Trustee Hart did not respond.
“There’s a lot of things I don’t respond to you,” Hart shot back.
Jahr made the motion, seconded by Budd to alert the broadcast crew that the meeting should be taped for rebroadcast. After discussion, the motion passed unanimously.
A Channel 2 television crew taped an interview with Supervisor White before the meeting and Bob Thorne, leader of an announced recall against White, kept buttonholing people who might say negative things about White and taking them to the news crew.
A count showed 182 people seated in the room, most Champagne supporters, plus 12 standing against the wall, six in a spillover room with a monitor across the hall, and 11 police officers in uniform.
Supervisor White, who fired Champagne for cause on May 27, read the charges against the public safety director. They boiled down to insubordination, neglect of duty, and incompetence.
He said Champagne had been offered a severance package for signing a separation agreement several times, including an enhanced package just before the meeting. He said the offer still stood during the meeting and Champagne again turned it down.
There were two-and-a-half hours of discussion before Champagne began his appeal to the board. He said he has never been disciplined in his life and no matter what happened that evening, “I leave with my integrity intact.”
After rebuttals to White’s charges, Champagne called his only witness, Cindy King, who was defeated by White for reelection to the supervisor’s position last August. King, took 25 minutes to read a letter she wrote to several newspapers last week, explaining in excruciating detail why she supports Champagne.
Public comment before the vote on reinstatement started at 1:36 a.m., with King first in line to push Ostrowski, Partridge, and Wright to vote in favor of Champagne. Thirty-seven speakers followed her to the podium for their three-minute speeches, all but one in support of Champagne.
After the vote, the disappointed crowd, which had thinned as the morning wore on, gathered in groups outside township hall, calling out to those leaving the building to join in the recall that has been in the works since November.