La Grange Quietly Shifts Affordable Housing Panel's Role

LA GRANGE, IL – Behind the scenes, La Grange officials changed the village's role in a housing panel from what the town's elected board originally envisioned, the village's lawyer says.

In April, the Village Board voted to create a task force to recommend ways to make local housing more affordable.

Subscribe

After the committee's first meeting in June, resident Jonathan Robinson filed a complaint with the attorney general. He said the village broke the state's open meetings law by failing to give proper public notice for the panel's first session.

However, the village argued last month that the committee was an informal, resident-driven group and thus not subject to the meetings law. The panel has no obligation to produce recommendations or anything else, officials say.

In a letter to the attorney general in August, Ben Schuster, the village's lawyer, indicated Robinson did not have the whole story.

"What (Robinson) may be unaware of is that, following the March 23 and April 27 Board meetings, Village staff and Village officials further discussed the creation of the Task Force and decided not to move ahead with the creation of the Task Force in the iteration that was discussed on March 23 and motioned for by the Village Board on April 27," Schuster said.

In those discussions, Schuster said, the staff and officials decided against proceeding with the task force in its "prior iteration."

That was because the village lacked enough staff to support the committee and thought it best for the group to be resident-driven without an exact purpose, Schuster said.

Schuster did not indicate which officials were involved in the discussions.

In a statement Thursday, Schuster said he was referring to a discussion on whether to proceed with a village ordinance to create the task force as originally envisioned as a formal committee.

"After assessing what would be required, it was determined that the capacity did not exist to support the effort with Village staff," Schuster said. "Volunteers graciously agreed to support the effort, eliminating the need for the creation of the Housing Task Force as a Village advisory board or commission."

Trustees and Village President Mark Kuchler did not return a message for comment from early Thursday morning.

At this week's Village Board meeting, Robinson pointed to Schuster's statements as an indication that decisions on the housing task force were made outside public meetings.

"The public only knows what the public is told," Robinson said. "We aren't sitting in the conversations that staff and elected officials have outside those meetings or the benefit of every prior conversation that may provide additional context or what was discussed behind the scenes that changed a decision."

Officials did not respond to his comments.

The attorney general's office is looking into the matter. The next step is for the agency to decide whether the village followed the requirements. That could take a while, given the thousands of complaints it receives every year.