If you checked out the Illinois Open Meetings Act (“IOMA”) section of the Illinois Attorney General’s website via the link we furnished in our last discussion (“Want To Learn About The Illinois Open Meetings Act? Feb. 15), you now probably know more about IOMA than most of our elected city officials.
That’s less because IOMA is that difficult to understand, and more because those elected officials don’t seem interested in knowing anything more than whether lame-duck City Mgr. Tim Schuenke puts “closed session” on the agenda; and whether city attorney Buzz Hill says it’s okay.
As stated at Page 20 of the Attorney General’s guide to IOMA: “The exceptions authorize but do not require the closing of a meeting falling within their scopes. 5 ILCS 120/2(b), 2a.” [Emphasis added] Which means our public officials – not only our aldermen, but also the members of the Park Board and our School Boards – go into closed session because the want to, not because they need to.
We realize there are some issues where confidentiality concerns may rival the public’s right to know. Negotiating strategies for labor contracts and litigation strategy for dealing with pending lawsuits come readily to mind as two matters where premature public disclosure of information discussed by the Council could put the city – and, therefore, its taxpayers – at a significant disadvantage. But even in those situations, secrecy is such a worrisome slippery slope that the state legislature still does not consider it so essential that closed session is required – it is only permitted.
It should be noted that many of the situations where the Council runs into closed session are ripe for abuse of that process and, consequently, of the taxpayer. Things like land acquisition, the hiring of consultants to perform a police department audit, or matters related to real estate development are ideal candidates for insider dealing and profiteering, a fact recently pointed out by Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass in discussing the “buffers” – well-connected friends, flunkies and political allies – who surround Mayor Daley and insulate him from direct contact with the shady dealings that occur in Chicago (“Laski’s book casts Daley as an emperor in the buff,” Feb. 15, 2008):
They roll in money, they’re included in multimillion-dollar zoning deals, they’re paid off as consultants on bus shelter contracts, or through real estate developments.
When you share a border with one of the most corrupt big cities in America and are entirely within the borders of one of the most corrupt counties, you’re kidding yourself if you think nothing corrupt could be going on here in Park Ridge, even if on a much smaller scale.
Which causes us to wonder about things like the City Council running into closed session to discuss the hiring of a law firm to audit the police department [pdf], especially when it appears that the audit is somehow tied to a possible buy-out of Police Chief Jeff Caudill’s contract. And about making an offer to buy private land for a police station when that offer is hundreds of thousands of dollars above the city’s appraised value of that land, and the offer is made even before the city has firmly decided on how big a station it can afford and what is the best location for it.
That’s why we propose that, from here on out, before any alderman votes to hide from the public in closed session, he should publicly answer the following question: “In what specific ways will the city be harmed if the public gets to hear this particular discussion in open session?”
We don’t expect Mayor Frimark’s alderpuppets – DiPietro (2nd), Bach (3rd), Allegretti (4th), Ryan (5th) and Carey (6th) – to answer this question, or even ask it of Schuenke or Hill. But maybe the two aldermen who have shown themselves to be accountable to their constituents, 1st Ward Ald. Dave Schmidt and 7th Ward Ald. Frank Wsol, will at least ask it.
Because we’d love to hear some of the answers.
9 comments so far
The last time I was at a council meeting they made the motion, used some mumbo jumbo language that sounded like rule numbers, and I had no idea why they were going into closed session. They didn’t even ask if the public had any comment or question about it before they voted to go into it. That sure seems wrong to me.
They do the bare minimum the law requires, and sometimes not even that…
I like your statement on corruption.
I’m certainly not one to doubt it can happen here but reading the local pars for 25 years and looking through older PR papers from the 50’s 60’s and 70s I wonder how after all these years it’s beginnig to take place?
We don’t want to burst your bubble, Mr. Touhy, but in our opinion the local papers have been more like advertising circulars than legitimate news sources for quite some time, ranging in quality from first-rate high school journalism to birdcage liner. It seems like half the Journal is about Des Plaines, and you don’t even get to any “news” in the Herald-Advocate until page 5 – with more than half of its pages being generic filler used in many of that chain’s other “local” papers.
It also seems to us that since the O’Hare-obsessed Ron Wietecha vacated his mayoral office and the city embarked on its development kick to turn “Action Ridge” into a smaller version of Des Plaines or Arlington Hts., there are far more opportunities for profiteering by landowners, developers, realtors, contractors, design professionals, consultants, lawyers and the vendors who service them than there were in the past. That means more opportunities for corruption, just like in Chicago and Crook County.
Of course, it’s possible that all of this development will actually make Park Ridge a better and more attractive community, will lower our taxes and drive up our property values even faster than they have increased over the past 20-30 years. Or…it could be just a bunch of greedy people grabbing everything they can while we lose our unique character, our taxes keep going up but even faster (or our infrastructure and services decline), and we’re left with a bundle of debt.
Care to place a bet?
Well the attractive part I can’t answer.
I’m against the project simply because of the increased traffic that it will probably bring though it could very well lower taxes. I probably wouldn’t of been as against it if it wasn’t so large.
Than with all I’ve read here and Park Ridge Underground, I probably can’t rule out the negatives and that maybe more possible.
Funny thing I should add about all this is I’ve brought these things up at a forum called topix.com where you have different sections for every community is the USA and hardly anyone replies.
Makes me wonder how many people in town are all that concerned with this?
From our experience, most people who aren’t concerned tend to be those who lack the information we here at PublicWatchdog – and the folks at Park Ridge Underground – try to provide.
That’s why, for example, you can’t assume that the new uptown development “could very well lower taxes.” There are few, if any, provable facts to support that position.
We suggest that the only way to improve government is to assume nothing, question everything, and demand hard evidence of anything before you believe it.
I’m concerned about it, Mr. Touhy, and so are a lot of people I know. But finding the nuggets of accurate information among all the propaganda and just plain b.s. shoveled out by local gov’t and their stooges in the local press isn’t easy.
But if you think the City or any other local gov’t is going to cut your taxes without cutting services or digging us deeper in debt, you must still believe in the tooth fairy.
How can the city justify offering hundreds of thousands of dollars more than its own appraisal for the new police station property? Isn’t that bidding against itself?
Hello anonymous on 02.20.08 9:15 am,
The City’s appraiser allegedly screwed up on the square feet in his appraisal. The City’s answer to that was to take a guess, I guess. What I know is if the information about it had not been given to the public by Alderman Schmidt we wouldn’t know a thing about it.
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