Illinois lawmaker wants to require fire chief candidates to disclose arson offenses
A convicted arsonist would have had to disclose his past offenses before getting a job as a fire chief under a bill introduced this week by a Republican lawmaker.
The Prairie Du Pont Fire Protection District in East Carondelet hired Jerame Simmons in December as its acting chief. A pardon from Gov. J.B. Pritzker allowed Simmons to get the job despite his guilty plea to setting fire in 1998 to an abandoned building.
State Rep. David Friess, R-Red Bud, filed a bill that would have required Simmons to disclose if he had been “convicted, arrested or charged with arson or other criminal damages by way of fire.” It would allow the hiring manager to take a candidate’s past into consideration.
“Local fire departments are an integral part of rural communities. If you appoint a convicted arsonist as fire chief, you are going to lose the faith and trust of your community,” Friess said.
It’s not clear if the bill (HB 5693) would have stopped the board from hiring Simmons, whose offenses from when he was an 18-year-old firefighter at the department were heavily reported and accessible through public records. Eleven of the department’s 13 firefighters quit in protest when he was hired.
A spokeswoman for Pritzker pointed to Simmons’ rehabilitation to justify the governor’s decision, Capitol News Illinois reported. Simmons is a married father of two who has served metro-east fire districts for more than 25 years.
Friess criticized Pritzker’s pardon as political. Simmons’ father, Herb Simmons, is the mayor of East Carondelet and executive director of St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency.
People want to “dwell on the past,” Jerame Simmons told the Belleville News-Democrat in January.
“They keep talking about my name and my father’s name. My father has helped more people than I could even think of helping, and all they want to do is drag him through the mud for something I did when I was a kid.”
This story was originally published February 16, 2022 at 4:26 PM.
