Today, the determination letter from the Illinois Attorney General’s office arrived stating that the Orland Park Public Library Board of Trustees (OPPL-BoT) violated the Open Meetings Act when they voted to “ratify and affirm” actions taken at an illegal special meeting held on a public holiday.
As we noted in this (HERE) article, you cannot “ratify and affirm” an illegal action.
The AG’s PAC had already determined that the February 12, 2014 OPPL-BoT special meeting violated the law (HERE).
This was all under the advice of Klein Thorpe Jenkins, unless the OPPL-BoT did it all on their own, which wouldn’t make much sense to do after they paid out over $160,000 in attorney fees since this whole episode got started last fall.
A couple of things from this determination:
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* the Board is directed to hold a new voteon all of the void ab initio policy changes it voted on at the 2/12/14 meeting and then attempted to “cure” by “ratifying and affirming” on 3/17/14
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* this means the Board will have to vote again on whether or not to continue allowing child porn to be accessed in the Library and whether it will continue to not call the police on men masturbating in the Library (and other security issues).
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* the Board will also have to vote again on all of those restrictions to public comment that the Board instituted on 2/12/14 and then “ratified and affirmed” on 3/17/14; these include forbidding the public to use electricity during public meetings, giving preference to Orland Park residents over nonresidents, saying they can restrict “repetitious” comments, forbidding videoconferencing, etc.
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So, now the OPPL-BoT will have to vote in public on whether or not to continue allowing child porn to be accessed in the Library and address the other matters like those public comment policy changes. They will have to have recital and deliberation on all of it.
2 Comments
Mitch
Posted at 01:23h, 09 AugustThey’ll vote yes.
SafeLibraries
Posted at 23:59h, 08 AugustThat policy found null and void included policy specifically designed to silence me personally.