WYZZ leaves baseball fans with no signal

WYZZ-TV, channel 43, went off the air tonight during the eighth inning of the National League Championship Series. It could have been the final game, as the Giants led the series three games to one. As it turned out, the Phillies won, sending the series back to Philadelphia. Not that WYZZ viewers could know. All they could see was “No Signal.”

Nothing has been posted even yet on their website explaining the outage or apologizing. If you call the studio for information, forget it — you get sent to someone’s voice mail. I did get a real person in the news room who politely informed me that they were having “technical difficulties” and that “engineers are working on the problem and will get the station back on the air as soon as possible.” It wasn’t soon enough. The game ended with WYZZ still off the air.

I hope they get their “technical difficulties” fixed before the World Series starts.

Case against Ardis — substantive or political?

There’s no love lost between State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons and Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis. Ardis supported Darin LaHood in the last State’s Attorney election and had some critical things to say about Lyons during the campaign.

Well, now the Journal Star reports that Mayor Ardis “may have committed a misdemeanor and subsequent felony by using what appeared to be official city stationery recently to request campaign donations on behalf of a judicial candidate, State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons said Wednesday.” Ardis stated that “he paid for the copies, envelopes and postage and the city letterhead was from a Word document on his home computer,” and so he thought he was complying with the law by not using city resources for campaign purposes.

Not so, according to the Journal Star. A City ordinance “prohibits city employees from engaging in ‘any prohibited political activity during any compensated time … [City] employees shall not intentionally misappropriate any [City] property or resources by engaging in any prohibited political activity for the benefit of any campaign for elective office or any political organization.'” When the Journal Star told Ardis about this section, he is quoted as saying it “doesn’t pertain to elected officials.”

The ordinance in question is from Section 2-336 of the City’s municipal code, and frankly I can see Ardis’s point. There is no definition that I can find of “city employee.” Assuming there is none, we have to look for clues from the context. Here are the first two items under Section 2-336:

Sec. 2-336. Prohibited political activities.

(a) City employees shall not intentionally perform any prohibited political activity during any compensated time (other than vacation, personal, or compensatory time off). City employees shall not intentionally misappropriate any city property or resources by engaging in any prohibited political activity for the benefit of any campaign for elective office or any political organization.

(b) At no time shall any executive or legislative branch constitutional officer or any official, director, supervisor, or city employee intentionally misappropriate the services of any city employee by requiring that city employee to perform any prohibited political activity (i) as part of that employee’s city duties, (ii) as a condition of city employment, or (iii) during any time off that is compensated by the city (such as vacation, personal, or compensatory time off).

Now, I’m not a lawyer, but neither is Ardis, so let’s just look at this from a layman’s perspective. It would appear to me that there is a difference between “city employee,” “constitutional officer,” “official,” “director,” and “supervisor.” Section 2-266 and 2-267 indicates that Mayor is an “elected city officer.” I can find no reference to the Mayor as a “city employee.” So at best, this section’s application to the Mayor is tenuous.

But that won’t stop Mr. Lyons. He’s rattling his saber, saying that he could charge Ardis with a felony through some other legal hocus-pocus. Unless other evidence can be provided besides what was cited in the Journal Star, I’m not buying that Ardis actually broke the law here. This appears to be a politically-motivated non-event. Note that Ardis is Republican and is supporting a Republican judicial candidate, whereas Lyons is a Democrat.

Given Lyons’ reluctance to prosecute cases he has little chance of winning, I predict this one will not be prosecuted either.