At Springfield’s Committee of the Whole on Tuesday, February 11, the alderpeople advanced a motion in favor of Mayor Buscher’s nominee for the vacant Ward 1 alder’s seat: Springfield-based cannabis business consultant Jeffrey Cox now awaits the debate agenda at city council on the 18th.
Jeff Cox is a native of the Springfield area. After growing up near Williamsville, he enrolled in an undergraduate program at Truman State University in Missouri — after graduation in Missouri, he attended the Florida Coastal School of Law before returning to Sangamon County to work as an assistant state’s attorney. He joined the Sangamon County Bar Association, over which he eventually presided for one year from 2015 to 2016, at which time he accepted an appointment from then-Governor Bruce Rauner to head the Illinois Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Medicinal Plants. He has been deemed a key contributor in the development of the state medicinal cannabis program, which preceded the establishment of recreational cannabis rules when Democrat JB Pritzker beat out Rauner in the 2018 gubernatorial race.
When Cox resigned from the bureau in 2020, he received praise from state democrats for maneuvering through the oftentimes troubled Rauner administration to establish the state’s cannabis program, which since recreational legalization has burgeoned into one of the most successful cannabis industries in the country, a (albeit distant) second to the truly enormous California market. Since leaving the government sector he has served as a consultant for cannabis regulatory compliance, and is now vice president of compliance for the Palatine-based Progressive Treatment Solutions (PTS). Other notable elements of his resume include a 5-year stint on the boards of directors for not-for-profit groups such as family homelessness advocacy group MERCY Communities, Parent Place of Springfield, and Prevention First.
Reportedly, Cox was one of over a dozen applicants to be interviewed by Mayor Buscher and her chief of staff for the Ward 1 position. When asked on Tuesday why he desired to join city council, Cox stated that he wished to help develop a better, safer community.
“Springfield’s been an important part of my life as far as I can remember,” he told the alderpeople. “I was born here — only time I left was for college and law school. I’ve had constituents already reaching out to express their concerns, their congratulations, their thoughts on where the city needs to go from here. I just want to be a part of that.”
At the time of Tuesday’s meeting, the alders had no substantive questions to ask of Mr. Cox; reportedly, the various alderpeople had already taken opportunities over the past week to consult with the mayor’s nominee. Alderwoman Erin Conley of Ward 8 mentioned that the only comments she had received about Cox were two Ward 1 residents who supported his nomination.
Some criticisms of Jeff Cox’s appointment have been raised by public speakers over the week following the publishing of his nomination to replace Redpath’s empty seat: on the 4th of February, Massey Commissioner Breonna Roberts compared him unfavorably to former Alderman Frank McNeil, who had been forwarded by some community advocates to fill the Ward 1 vacancy. McNeil’s outsize role in bringing Springfield’s council into existence arguably makes him one of the most accomplished politicians in the city’s living history, a veteran alder who sat with former Ald. Chuck Redpath on city council from 1987 until fully retiring in 2007; McNeil, argued Roberts, ought to be impossible to turn down.
“[Cox]’s not without experience, and I don’t want to take that from him,” said Roberts, “However, when you compare the depth of service and history of advocacy, and the direct impact that McNeil has had on Springfield’s governance — the contrast is stark.”
Roberts’s point was less about the merits of Cox versus McNeil and more about the city’s patterns of aversion to representation, about which residents have vocally complained to the city since Redpath’s appointment to city clerk in January. Full transparency in the appointment process, they have argued, would help to dispel perceptions of corruption and bias.
The Ward 1 seat at city council has, as of Tuesday, now sat empty for 5 weeks.
