Friday, November 20, 2009 East Central Illinois

Urbana getting bigger legal bills

By: Amy F. Reiter

E-mail Story Printer-friendly

Monday, June 16, 2008
Story Photo

Photo by:

Weedman

URBANA – From the day Jon White was charged back in January 2007, the legal bills in the Urbana school district started piling up.

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, The News-Gazette obtained legal bills from the Urbana school district, which denied a request to identify which bills were related to the White case.

The district's lawyer, Dennis Weedman, works for Robbins Schwartz Nicholas Lifton & Taylor of Collinsville.

In invoices dated Feb. 15, 2007, and March 23, 2007 – just after White's charges were filed – the district received $24,928 in legal bills from Weedman's firm. In the previous two months, the district received $7,307 in legal bills from Weedman's firm.

The Urbana school board hired a separate firm, The Taylor Law Office in Effingham, specifically for the purpose of evaluating the district's response to concerns about White and to look at its policies.

Bills from the law firm – one from April 2007 and one from June 2007 – show the school district has already paid at least $42,804 for the external review.

Because the district was waiting on the conclusion of White's criminal trial, the review has not yet been completed and presented to the board, according to Weedman.

The district, along with McLean County Unit 5, is also facing civil suits from the families of victims.

Ellyn Bullock, the Champaign lawyer representing two of the victims, said the plaintiffs' attorneys are working together.

"We have been working on a complaint and we will be ready to file," she said. "I would expect to file end of the summer/early fall."

Weedman said in February the Urbana school district had received notification of upcoming suits, as required by law.

"We've given notice (of the letters) to the insurance carriers that would ultimately defend and pay any claims," he said.

Taxpayers, in addition to paying for the school district's insurance, may end up footing part of the bill if suits are successful.

If the district has to pay a settlement, it would "most likely (come) from insurance coverage and the school district's tort fund, which is funded through the district's tax levy," Weedman wrote in a June 6 e-mail.

For the school district's 2007-08 budget, the tort fund included an estimated beginning balance of $133,383, with budgeted revenues of $529,929 and expenditures of $376,503.

"Urbana school district is a member of an insurance cooperative comprised of other Central Illinois public school districts," Weedman wrote.

"Claims made by members of the cooperative could very well affect the cooperative's cost of future coverage and its ability to procure certain levels of coverage."

According to Urbana schools business director Carol Baker, other members of the cooperative include school districts in Tolono Unit 7, Gibson City-Melvin-Sibley Unit 5, Mahomet-Seymour Unit 3, St. Joseph-Ogden Unit 305 and Champaign Unit 4.

Other Jon White stories