Elmhurst School District Settles Open Meetings Dispute

ELMHURST, IL — The Elmhurst School District has backed down in its fight to keep secret the school board's closed door discussion about an administrative organization plan last year. Earlier this week, a judge approved a settlement between the district and former Elmhurst resident Edgar Pal, who sued the district to release the minutes and the audio from the meeting and pay his attorney fees. In the settlement, the district agreed to do all those things.

On Friday morning, Pal released the 34-minute audio and transcript of the June 2018 meeting to Patch. Under state law, public bodies can close the doors to discuss specific personnel, collective bargaining and salary schedules. But they are not allowed to talk in secret about general personnel issues.

Shortly after the June 2018 meeting, Pal filed an appeal to the attorney general's office, which handles open meetings and public records issues.

In a response letter to the attorney general, the school district's lawyer, Brian Crowley, argued the district followed the Open Meetings Act in closing the meeting.

"For the board to have a candid forthright discussion regarding the proposed administrative reorganization proposal, it was essential for the board to discuss the performance and capabilities of specific employees," Crowley wrote.

He said specific employees were brought up 17 times in the meeting.

"These departments have few employees and when the performance of the department is discussed, or when a specific position is discussed, those comments are attributable to the job performance of individual employees even if not specifically discussed," Crowley said.

In April, the attorney general determined that most of the closed meeting in question should have been open to the public and requested the district release the records, a recommendation the district did not follow. So a few months ago, Pal, represented by attorney Josh Burday, filed a lawsuit in DuPage County Court.

In settling the case, the district redacted small portions of the transcript and audio that it said dealt with specific personnel. Crowley signed an affidavit to that effect.

Schools Superintendent Dave Moyer's office referred questions to Crowley, who did not return a message for comment.

In an interview Friday, Burday said Pal's legal bills amounted to about $4,000, which the district is paying. The school board, he said, should have held the discussions in public.

"There was an attorney general's opinion, but there are no repercussions for ignoring an attorney general's ruling," he said.

The matter was resolved relatively quickly, Burday said, so the costs weren't high. He said he pursued an open government case in southern Illinois that resulted in the public body's bills reaching $90,000.

"In Elmhurst, we worked out a resolution with the opposing counsel. That's always best for both parties," Burday said.

In an email, Pal said the school district is expected to address the settlement at its meeting Tuesday. He said he planned to give public comment at the meeting.

"It's important for public bodies to keep discussions open so that the community can hold its elected officials accountable," Pal said. "In this case, the board discussed budgetary considerations related to an administrative reorganization. These topics did not need to remain private, and the public has the right to know the costs and structure of the district's administration."

Pal has pushed public records issues before. Over the summer, Pal said he noticed aldermen were looking at their city-issued laptops during public comment, so he filed a public records requests 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 last month 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.