Elmhurst Park Board Improperly Closed Meeting: Attorney General

ELMHURST, IL — Twice in the last year, the attorney general's office has found that Elmhurst government bodies improperly discussed personnel reorganizations behind closed doors, in violation of the law. The issues were brought to the office's attention by former Elmhurst resident Edgar Pal.

In December, Elmhurst Patch reported the Elmhurst School District settled with Pal over his lawsuit contending the district broke the state Open Meetings Act by discussing an administrative reorganization in closed session. The attorney general sided with Pal last April, but the district declined to release the audio until the settlement.

Another case involved the Elmhurst Park District, which has gone unreported in the media until now. Last May, the attorney general agreed with Pal's contention that the park board broke state law by discussing succession planning behind closed doors in October 2017. That discussion involved the creation of three new positions, according to district documents.

Under state law, a government body can discuss specific personnel in closed session, but general issues involving employees must be in the open.

In an August letter to the attorney general, Andrew Paine, the park district's lawyer, said the discussion about those positions involved removing responsibilities from two specific employees and promoting another specific employee. Such a decision required a "frank discussion" of the performance and abilities of those employees and could not be separated from talk of the succession plan, said Paine, who is with the downtown Chicago-based Tressler law firm.

Pal learned of the closed discussion on the succession plan after the park district voted to release the closed meeting minutes in the summer of 2018. While the minutes do not mention specific employees' names, they document the discussion about the new positions.

After the attorney general agreed with Pal, the district released the 25-minute audio. About half is muted, presumably because it involves discussions of specific employees.

"The park district released the recording to me," Pal said in an email to Patch, "but they did so quietly, without acknowledging the matter in open session."

According to the closed session minutes, the board "provided consensus" on the succession plan. Pal asked the attorney general whether the consensus amounted to a vote in closed session. Under the law, a vote must take place in public.

Paine, the board's lawyer, said board members did not vote in closed session, but took action on the plan a few months later as part of the budget approval. The attorney general agreed, finding no vote took place behind closed doors.

Last year, Pal submitted a complaint to the attorney general that the park district failed to notify the public about a June meeting of the finance and audit committee, which the district acknowledged. In September, the attorney general found the district should have notified the public.

Over the last couple years, Pal has brought government openness issues to the attorney general's attention. Last summer, Pal said he noticed aldermen were looking at their city-issued laptops during public comment, so he filed a public records request for the laptops' browser histories. The city denied him, saying they were not public records. Pal took the matter to the attorney general, which found in November that they were public records. The city then released them.

The browser histories showed the aldermen were mostly reviewing documents prepared for City Council meetings, but other items were unrelated, including an airline ticket reservation, a story about Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and a Chicago Tribune story about white nationalists.

In the school district case, the settlement required the schools to cover Pal's attorney tab, an estimated $4,000. The meeting audio and transcript have been released, with the exception of small sections when board members apparently discussed specific personnel.

In Illinois, all members of government boards are required to undergo Open Meetings Act training.