LTHS Met Illegally 8 Times Behind Closed Doors: State

LA GRANGE, IL – The Lyons Township High School board broke state law by closing its doors eight times in 2022 and early 2023, the attorney general said Friday.

In a letter, Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Silver requested the board release the entire closed session recordings for seven sessions and all but 12 minutes of another.

They were held after a big industrial developer offered to buy the school's 70 wooded acres in Willow Springs. Once the details became apparent in early 2023, residents rose in opposition.

School officials did not return a message for comment Monday.

In April 2023, the attorney general ordered the school board to release two closed-session recordings on Jan. 23, 2023. The board chose to release them rather than fight the matter in court.

This time, the board could decide to keep the recordings secret. But most public bodies follow the attorney general's recommendations in such situations.

In those earlier recordings, board members agreed that an industrial operation would hurt neighbors.

And they strategized to keep information about the sale away from other public bodies, including a neighboring elementary school and the village of Willow Springs.

In August 2023, the board ousted its law firm, Chicago-based Franczek. Its lawyer, Ares Dalianis, attended closed meetings that were supposed to be open to the public. Behind closed doors, Dalianis said the school could pressure the village into changing its zoning, which barred industrial uses. The village was against amending the code.

Seven of the meetings in violation were held in 2022 – April, May, June, September, October, November and December, the attorney general said. Another one was held in February 2023.

In its defense, the board said the discussions involved the property's sale price, which public bodies can keep secret from the public under the Open Meetings Act.

But Silver rejected that argument. He said none of the meetings – except 12 minutes in the December 2022 session – were about that topic.

The board also contended that it could close the doors because its attorney was present for seven of the eight meetings. Such communications were protected by attorney-client privilege, the school asserted.

However, Silver said the exception involving attorney communications did not apply, unless the discussions involved pending, probable or imminent litigation.

"(T)his office has also frequently determined that the appropriate remedy for a violation requires the release of an entire closed session verbatim recording, even though an attorney participated in the closed session discussion," Silver said.

In March 2023, a month before the board election, members abandoned the plan to sell to developer Bridge Industrial.

Over the last year, the board appears to have followed the Open Meetings Act, holding long discussions on the Willow Springs land in public.

In a statement Monday, Willow Springs resident Kim Barker said it was "astonishing" the school board ignored the open meetings law at least nine times. She is a former member of the board for Pleasantdale School District 107, whose elementary school is next to the high school's land.

She said she presumed every school board member took part in state-mandated Open Meetings Act training.

"LT completely and habitually ignored the law, and it makes one wonder what else they are hiding," Barker said.

Another Willow Springs resident, Fred Whiting, said the board should address the "continuous breach of trust."

"When the board was previously found in violation of the Open Meetings Act by the Attorney General for this issue in 2023, the board held no public discussion after being ordered to release recordings," Whiting said. "There was no apology and no accountability to the taxpayers. Now that they've been found guilty on an additional eight – yes, eight – meetings, I hope they reconsider their silence and take responsibility for their actions."

And resident Kathy McCarthy said the attorney general confirmed what the community had alleged all along.

"The (school) board engaged in a months-long, illegal effort to hide its negotiations with an industrial builder from residents and local officials," McCarthy said in a statement. "This wasn’t a one-time mistake. This was a sustained campaign of concealment, spanning hours of discussion, and we’re grateful to the Attorney General for calling out this serial abuse of closed sessions."

In 2023, McCarthy, Whiting, Barker and Jennifer Houch filed complaints that sparked the attorney general's investigation.