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Editorials
Meetings law violations likely to cost taxpayers : Editorials : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisMeetings law violations likely to cost taxpayers
| 8/9/2012
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Over the past few years the Oswego School District Board has become a chronic violator of the Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA).
The OMA is the state law requires the school board and other local government agencies to conduct the public's business in a place that is convenient to the taxpayers they are serving and in public view. The OMA does allow the school board to meet behind closed doors, but only to discuss a very limited number of issues and requires that any final action on those issues be taken in public view.
But school board members-including those that have advocated greater transparency and public access to school business while running for their board seats-have continued to attempt to shut the public out.
Last fall the board supported an ill-advised administrator recommendation to exclude the media from the meetings of a superintendent's committee re-drawing school district boundaries-an obvious violation of the OMA. And just this spring the board attempted unsuccessfully to hold some of its meetings at a location that would have been inconvenient for many school district residents (a Naperville restaurant) and then neglected to record not one but five of its closed sessions as required by the OMA.
In response to the school board's latest OMA violations, Kendall County State's Attorney Eric Weis has recommended the board agree to take some corrective actions, including:
*Requiring school board members to read the OMA;
*Have the board's attorneys conduct a one hour training session on the OMA for the board;
*Have an attorney present who is knowledgeable of the OMA at all board meetings for at least one year; and,
*Have a school district staff member present who knows how to work recording equipment to record the board's closed sessions or have a back-up recorder available in the event the primary one fails.
The board along with its attorneys are now considering Weis' recommendations.
We support all of Weis' recommendations. Given the board's poor track record with the OMA some board training and preventative measures are needed.
The downside, however, is the recommendations will cost the school district money. The district will have to pay more in attorneys' fees for the board to have an attorney present at all of its meetings for a year-or even six months as the district's attorneys have recommended. It will also cost taxpayers money to have the district's attorneys conduct the OMA training seminar.
None of these expenses needed to have been incurred if the board had a rudimentary understanding of the OMA and a desire to abide by its provisions. Hopefully the board will soon learn that under state law:
*Committees like "superintendent's committees" that present recommendations to the administration and the board are indeed subject to the OMA;
*They must hold their meetings in locations and at times that are convenient to school district residents. (Free helpful hint: Holding dinner meetings in Naperville is also probably not a wise move from a political standpoint. If the board wants to hold a dinner meeting, why not choose a local restaurant that is at least paying taxes to the school district?); and,
*They should make sure their recording device is working and they record all of their closed meetings as required under the OMA. The recommendation for a back-up recorder can be solved with $60 or less and a quick trip to a local electronics store.
We will be watching to see if the board can now learn from its previous OMA violations and abide by the law they have sworn under oath to uphold.
A school board that understands and abides by the OMA is one that avoids negative publicity for itself and its school district as a whole, spends less in attorneys' fees and whose credibility concerning issues of public transparency cannot as easily be called into question.
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