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”]
![](https://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/AWI-Bolongbrook-150x150.jpg)
3 Comments
John Windmiller
Posted at 13:17h, 09 Augustbusiness as usual in Clark County
Warren J. Le Fever
Posted at 13:24h, 09 AugustI agree with you that what is being done is stalling using attorney fees to run up the bills as a cost excuse rather than simply complying. Using white to redact rather than black is interesting although may not be illegal or improper. Are there any sanctions for not using black?
jmkraft
Posted at 13:35h, 09 AugustYes, it must be redacted in black (I suppose any color other than white might work) so the receiving person knows something was redacted – AND – the public body must state what authority they had to redact them. There is either an AG opinion or a court opinion on this subject that I have read before and now must find again.