Clark Co. Park District attorney invoices presented in July –

Clark County, IL. (ECWd) –
The invoices below were presented for payment at the July 2015 Board of Commissioners meeting for the Clark County Park District. This is not the complete listing of invoices to verify the claim of “tens of thousands” spent on FOIA in the past year – those invoices have been requested and I am still waiting on them. This is simply what was voted on during the July meeting.
Included in these invoices are those from the board attorney, and I will break those down by subject:
Page 1 and 2, for $1150.00 includes: 8 emails/phone calls from Charity Murphy (3.8 hours) — 1 item for review of litigation (0.5 hours) — and 1 item of discussion with Romero (0.3 hours which Romero paid)
Page 4, telephone call re: litigation – $177.50
Page 6 – $727.50 – includes: information related to FOIA lawsuit
Page 8 and 9 – $2490.40 – which includes:   1.4 hours working on revised covenants — 0.4 hours working on the agenda (Charity’s job) — 12 communications with Charity Murphy for a total of 4.3 hours — 0.5 hours of email exchange and review with me (which is not billable to the park district but was billed anyway) and with Charity Murphy — and 2.75 hours to attend the meeting plus mileage
Page 10 – OMA litigation items for $265.50
Other invoices from other people are included after the attorney invoices, and the redaction method used by the Park District should be BLACK redaction, not white, because black signifies redactions were made and the District must explain each redaction (which it failed to do).
What I see, is the park district appearing to do what they can to stall or not produce records buy seeking attorney advice, then throwing that cost out to local media as a “see how much this is costing us!“, instead of simply producing the records.
[gview file=”https://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/FOIA-7.19.15-Scan-1.pdf”]