Orland Park Library Must Revote on Porn Issue: Attorney General

The Orland Park Library Board failed to adequately inform the public prior to its vote on public access to online pornography, according to the Illinois Attorney General’s office, and now the board must vote again.

The attorney general’s Public Access Bureau ruled on Aug. 6, 2014, that “the nature of the matters under consideration” was not conveyed to the public properly before the board acted in March “to approve the agenda items.”

The ruling was in response to a complaint from Megan Fox, of Mokena, who’s been on a quest to get library officials to restrict access to pornography on its computers since the winter of 2013.

What set this in motion? During an Oct. 4 library visit, Fox was checking email in the second-floor computer lab area, she told Patch, when she saw a man at a nearby computer looking at a picture of an “LCD-colored, oiled breasted naked woman.”

She complained to the library director via email, but received no response. The issue was eventually brought to the board.

Library officials, citing the First Amendment, declined to impose restrictions on Internet access in the adult computer area last year, and the library trustees supported that decision.

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In light of the Public Access Bureau ruling, Fox told the Chicago Tribune she expects the outcome of a new vote to be different because “the composition of the Board has changed greatly since the last time this matter was voted on.”

Bridget Bittman, spokeswoman for the library, said the ruling is being reviewed by library trustees.

The attorney general’s office has previously ruled in favor of Fox and her associate, Kevin DuJan, in their dealings with the Orland Park Library Board, issuing an opinion earlier this year that the board acted improperly and violated the Illinois Open Meetings Act in restricting public comments.

But the AG’s office has not been one-sided in its view of this ongoing dispute. Several decisions by the Public Access Bureau have landed in the library board’s favor. The running dispute is acrimonious.

In April 2014, DuJan accused Bittman and library director Mary Weimar of engaging in a “hate fest” against Fox and DuJan during a regional library system workshop in December 2013.

Bittman said “nothing demeaning” was said about the anti-porn advocates.

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