On the evening of November 10th, a special hearing of the Urbana Human Relations Commission was convened at the City Building for an appeals hearing to a Human Rights complaint. I filed the complaint myself on September 14th, and City Attorney James Simons dismissed the complaint a month later, making a number of erroneous and absurd citations and claims (article on the complaint and Simon’s dismissal here).
Simon marched directly into the hearing with his silly and corrupt arguments, and both the public and hearing body saw right through him. Numerous Urbana residents directly criticized Simon for his unethical conduct, and one of the members of the hearing body, Aisha Lamb Sobh, directly admonished Simon for using ad-hominem arguments against me.
My thoughts, which I think closely match those of the public and of the hearing body, are that James Simon was an incredible embarrassment to the City of Urbana. He conducted himself dishonestly and unethically, in an effort to defend and promote obvious discriminatory hiring practices by the City.
In fact, there is plenty of evidence to support the claim that Simon conducts himself dishonestly and unethically in most City matters. It is unbelievable to me that Diane Marlin has appointed James Simon to be Urbana’s “Ethics Officer”, and I believe that James Simon is public enemy number one in regards to fighting corruption and discrimination in within the City of Urbana.
With virtually no need for any deliberation, the hearing body ruled against Simon on both of his claims for dismissal, which were “no jurisdiction” and “no probable cause”.
The entire November 10th Public Hearing of the Urbana Human Relations Commission can be viewed here, and I think it is worth watching:
This seemed like a decent informal hearing. However, the chair seems to have let his commitment lapse a seven day requirement so that Ms. Mittens could close the matter without a new order.
Simon musta Said: Ms. Mitten, Ms. Mitten, hang on to our wool.