“Weasels” may be a little harsh but maybe not.

It boggles my mind that this process could play itself out in this kind of secrecy, and that our elected officials sound proud of it rather than embarrassed by it. Not just Borrelli but Sotos and Eggemann too.

Worse yet, this Board just stuck the 2020 board with the same process.

On second thought you’re right. They are weasels.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We considered it “a little harsh” originally, but the more we thought about how contemptuous this Board is of the taxpayers we came to the conclusion it was just right. Or maybe not harsh enough.

So are you saying that if the Board had published the tentative contract before it was approved by the Board there would have been no negative consequences?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Yep, as best as we can tell. But we’d L-O-V-E to see a written opinion from the District’s attorneys proving us wrong.

For me, it’s one thing to comply with the existing contract, assuming compliance with the 2012 contract required the secrecy the Board did not wish to challenge this time around. But what I find unforgivable is that this Board built the same provision into the new contract. Since only the PREA benefits from secret negotiations, it does look like the Board was doing the PREA’s bidding by including it and tying the hands of the board that will be negotiating the next contract in 2020. That’s pretty lousy.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Renewing that provision may be the single worst feature of this new contract. But with Borrelli being Heinz’s sock puppet, Sotos being PREA-owned, and the rest of the Board being lemmings, we predicted that would happen months in advance.

Yet another circumstance when we get no joy from being right.

Aside from Borreli asserting fines and penalties as what you seem to have described as an excuse for not being transparent, both parties have an obligation to deal in good faith. That’s a term that means something different to different people I suppose.

As much as it now may appear that spilling the negotiation details into the the newspapers might not have provided Park Ridge citizens with a better financial/academic outcome, how could the board members have known that in advance?

It sounds like you would have been pleased to see a written legal opinion regarding the board publicly sharing mid-negotiation information. The key word here is opinion. Lawyers rarely deal in absolutes and typically worry their clients with “possiblities.” Isn’t it possible that depending on the how badly the other team wanted to win one point or another the effort to be completely transparent could have caused negotiations to stall, or become completely side tracked?

It’s hard swallow, but when we elect our officials we empower them to make decisions on our behalf. Sometimes their strategies and thought processes are just not going to be shared with us. Not all the time, but certainly sometimes. I know you are not OK with that, but some people can accept these variables as part of the negotiation process.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course you’e “defending.”

To this D-64 Board, the duty to bargain in “good faith” means giving the PREA what it wants. But since these Board members didn’t have the honesty and integrity for “spilling the negotiation details into the the newspapers,” we’ll never know whether doing so would have “provided Park Ridge citizens with a better financial/academic outcome.” That’s the question secrecy never answers.

So what if “negotiations…stall, or become completely side tracked”? That’s why there are impasse and mediation procedures, and strikes. And that’s why there should be transparency so that the reasons for impasse – and how the negotiations got there – are known to all the taxpayers.

When we elect our officials we don’t empower them to hide from us and keep secrets from us. But it comes as no suprise that an anonymous commentator would endorse such hiding and secrecy.

Not Defending:

I expect my elected representatives to share “their strategies and thought processes” ALL THE TIME!!!! We’re not dealing with state secrets and national security here. I have never heard anybody at D-64 explain why contract negotiations need to be conducted in secret, which I assume is because their explanation sucks.

I’m a Democrat so this isn’t a D or R thing, it’s a dishonest and stupid thing.

I presented some reasonable perspectives and questions, and your response was surprisingly civil until you fell back to your complaints about anonymity. I’ll respond to you as I believe you would to me. If you don’t like the anonymous function of your site why don’t you remove the option? Every conversation about issues doesn’t need to be an argument Mr. Dog. Or, does it?

EDITOR’S NOTE: No surprise in your not seeing the irony in an anonymous commentator extolling secret proceedings – and and the anonymity of commentary in their favor.

If we’re not debating (or arguing, in your view) issues, what’s the point of the “conversation”?

The goal of negotiating is to come to an agreement, not to drag things out and waste time and purposefully create an impasse.

I’m glad that the board of directors of companies that I hold stock in do not publicly negotiate their contracts. What you and the other respondent are promoting is for the board to make a suggestion, then run out to the audience and ask everyone if they are ok with the idea, then go back to the union and try not to let on that there is either little, or a great deal of support for the concept. You want to see the issues so you can pick apart the actions of board members and lawyers. Perhaps not everyone is interested in creating or watching a food fight? If everyone is as unhappy with the D64 board as you are, there will be opportunities to unseat them soon enough.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The goal of negotiating is to come to an agreement advantageous to the person(s) you represent, not just any old agreement – even if it disadvantages your principal(s). And if “drag[ging] things out” is a problem for you, beef to the D-64 Board and the PREA for taking almost 9 months to do something it could have done in 9 weeks.

Private companies, even publicly-traded ones, are profit-driven and don’t operate under the same rules as governmental bodies. So what’s the point of bringing up that kind of red herring?

What this editor is promoting is open, “blue-sky” negotiations that can be seen and heard – or not – by the taxpayers and union membership alike, either in person and on videotape. Why would anybody who claims to be a champion of “transparency” – like Borrelli, Sotos and Eggemann, who can’t say enough about how much they want it even as they vote time and again for closed sessions – insist on negotiating 4-year, $200 million-plus contracts in secret? And if those negotiations truly are a “food fight,” why shouldn’t the taxpayers get to see it, and hold their elected officials accountable for it?

Those were some good points. Much of what you’ve said here makes good sense. It is certainly odd to promote transparency during elections and then take actions that contradict your platform. I do expect officials to have integrity.

Your Editor’s Note to “Defending” at 12:01 p.m. hits the nail on the head.

Blue-sky negotiations are what the taxpayers deserve. The fact that this Board failed to insist on that term in this new contract, standing alone, makes this new contract fatally flawed. And that’s without getting into the absurdity of CPI (or CPI-U) based compensation.

It makes me wonder who the District’s attorneys are and whether they are in bed with the PREA’s negotiators, or whether our board members are just this thick-headed that they don’t realize where the line in the sand must be drawn.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The District’s attorneys are solidly competent. They are just coming up with the legal advice and justifications that this anti-transparent Board and administration are asking them to provide.

When Wietecha, Marous and Frimark were the mayors with complicit city counsels, attorneys Buzz Hill and Klein, Thorpe & Jenkins provided the legal justifications for the secret and silly things those folks wanted to do. When Dave Schmidt became mayor and got a majority of aldermen who shared his H.I.T.A. vision of transparent and accountable government, Hill and KTJ were able to provide legal justification for that philosophy – even easier than for the secrecy of Schmidt’s predecessors.

So are you saying that the district’s attorneys do whatever the school board tells them to? If that’s the case, then aren’t those attorneys doing the taxpayers a disservice?

EDITOR’S NOTE: No, the attorneys may very well be giving sound legal advice. It’s the Board members who don’t want transparency and accountability – and who are directing the attorneys to come up with the legal excuses enabling the Board members to hide from the taxpayers.

Has any D64 board member or administrator made a case for the secrecy of the negotiations or not publishing the tentative agreement? I can’t see any benefit to the taxpayers, so I have just assumed it’s for the benefit of the PREA.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The only person on that Board who actually addressed the transparency issue was Eggemann, which was the sole reason for his lonely “no” vote.

The rest of that Board, individually or collectively, has not even attempted to justify closed-session negotiations because, at the end of the day, they don’t have the fortitude/stones to say “no” to the PREA; and they don’t want their constituents to be able to observe just how insipid and inept they and the district’s administrators are as negotiators

Public officials who hate transparency will find every available way around it, even if they need legal advice to do so. And do not think for a minute that Heinz, Kolstad and the other administrators want transparency. They’re glorified teachers who live for secrecy in everything they do.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Agreed, and IOMA – although a decent law – is a Swiss cheese of loopholes for dishonest public officials who want to hide from their constituents.

You First?

Wow, your hypocrisy once again sets a new high-water mark. If you believe that the D64 Board should disclose attorney advice, why don’t you lead by example?

As I recall, the Library’s attorney wrote a memo regarding the tutor policy that was inadvertently released to the press, and you were among those who moved quickly to squelch it. No doubt, the memo stated that the Board was discriminating against a certain class, but that didn’t fit your “narrative”, so you actually fired that attorney and moved the next one. Opinion shopping, perhaps?

As one of the legal weasels, you know better than most how to “game” the system. It just takes a remarkable amount of chutzpah to demand disclosure from the D64 Board when you are too much a coward to do it yourself.

PS – save me from the “attorney privilege” nonsense; no doubt the D64 Board could claim the same, but you would not give them a pass.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The attorney’s opinion about the tutor policy to which you refer was fully discussed in an open session during the October 2015 board meeting. And the attorney who provided that opinion was not “fired”: her firm was replaced by the City Council and the new firm, according to custom, also became the Library’s counsel.

To further illustrate the difference between the Library Board and the D-64 Board, at the October 2016 meeting the Library Board voted unanimously to publish a portion of the August 2016 closed session meeting minutes – which closed session this editor voted against – containing a Board discussion questioning the attorney’s opinion against open-session discussion of the Library Director’s review; and those previously-closed minutes were published as part of the August Board meeting.