At the July 20^th City Council meeting, during a presentation about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Urbana City Attorney James Simon made a great number of false claims (documented to some extent in my letter to the Urbana City Council here). One particular statement, rather a threat, was in regards to the hypothetical release of his own home address. 

I cannot imagine what compelled Simon to make such a silly and childish threat.  I can only interpret this as an attempt to frighten the City Council from making any decisions that would result in the City being more transparent.  Mr. Simon probably wishes to protect his peers from public scrutiny, as do all corrupt officials.

I revisited the meeting video to write down Simon’s exact words:

“So they FOIA, ‘give me Jim Simon’s home address’.  That’s personal and private information.  I guarantee you, if that happened, I would be in court in about 8 minutes to prevent that, and if I was too late to prevent it, I’d be set seeking hefty damages.”

Mr. Simon knows better than this.  The problem is, he just doesn’t give a moment’s thought to lying to the City Council and to the public.  I found it unacceptable that the City Attorney would think it suitable to publicly lie and issue silly threats, so I sought to prove the point. 

I emailed Mark Shelden, the Champaign County Recorder, with a FOIA request asking for the information that Mr. Simon claimed is “personal and private” (and therefor out of the purview of FOIA).  Unlike the City of Urbana, with their constant extensions and exemptions and fees, Mr. Shelden responded as soon as he saw my email at the beginning of the business day, and he provided exactly the documents I’d asked for.

James Leo Simon & Shelley M Simon Mortgage (608 S McKinley Ave Champaign)

James Leo Simon & Shelley M Simon Deed (608 S McKinley Ave Champaign)

The records clearly show Mr. Simon’s home address, his deed, and his mortgage statement recorded with the county.  Contrary to Simon’s lies, this is actually public information, not private information.  I can see the signatures of James Leo Simon, and his wife Shelley M Simon, and I can see that they got an amazing mortgage rate at 3.25%.  They are also taking two property tax exemptions and somehow holding a $225k property tax valuation on a home that they bought for $330k.  Real savers – good for them.  None of this was even slightly interesting to me until Simon raised the issue at a public meeting.  No one ever cared about Mr. Simon’s house.

To be clear, I don’t know Mark Shelden.  I’ve never met him and I don’t think I’ve ever emailed him before.  He wasn’t doing me a favor by sending me these documents, he was following the FOIA law.  The FOIA law would have allowed him to wait a week before responding to me, but it seems like Mr. Shelden felt like he could be a better public servant than what the bare minimum would allow.

I sent all of this information in an email to Mayor Marlin and the City Council, as well as directly to James Simon (full email viewable here) on August 17^th, 2020.  According to Simon’s “guarantee”, he would be in court immediately to sue Mark Sheldon for “hefty damages”. It has been more than a month, and nothing has been filed with the County court.  Mayor Marlin did not respond to my email, nor did Simon or any of the council members.

I think it would be appropriate for Mr. Simon to publicly apologize for his asinine threat, and for the other lies he told at the July 20^th City Council meeting.  The Council should also meet to specifically discuss Mr. Simon’s future employment, since his sense of ethics clearly does not align with the values of the City of Urbana.  I think we all know that none of these things will happen, so this article will serve as a memorial to their collective failure.

-Christopher Hansen, Urbana