Des Plaines, IL. (ECWd) –
Des Plaines School District No. 62, who has a history of filing false police reports, and using police and prosecutors to attack a citizen for exercising her right to petition her local government (read about it here), has been found by the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor (“PAC”) to have violated the Freedom Of Information Act.
According to the PAC, the school violated Section 7(2) of the FOIA by failing to conduct an adequate search for records requested under FOIA. The District tried claiming records held by its attorney were not subject to FOIA, using Section 7(2), because they didn’t feel like asking the attorney for them.
Section 7(2) clearly states that public records held by a party who has a contract to perform a government function on behalf of the government are considered public records subject to FOIA. We won a PAC determination years ago against the Edgar County ETSB in 2013 for cell phone records using this same arguement (click here).
These particular records from D62, were claimed to have been prepared by the school attorney and never for the district, however, we point back to Section 7(2) which clearly indication records of contractors (the attorney) are records of the public body, when they pertain to the public business of the public body Chicago Tribune v. College of DuPage 2017 IL App (2d) 160247 (dealing with COD Foundation records).
D62 was requested to obtain the responsive records from its attorney, Franczek Radelet, and provide them to the requester.
2 Comments
Xωρίς ONOMA
Posted at 10:45h, 16 NovemberMarcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman politician and lawyer, who served as consul in the year 63 BC. One of his most famous quotes is: “Salus populi suprema lex esto” which (using Google translator) means “The safety of the people be the supreme law”. Although we do not live in the ancient Roman Empire, how safe are we today with all these unscrupulous public administrators who routinely serve NOT us the people but their “masters”? (e.g. the law makers who are also law violators)
Kyle Mitchell
Posted at 13:56h, 07 OctoberAre there any consequences for the law violators, other than our First Amendment Right to just talk about leaders being law violators? All I see are a couple of AG requests that could just continue to be ignored, right? Thanks for keeping us informed. Streator doesn’t even seem to feel the need to provide a reason for their FOIA denials now and just sends an unexplained denial letter from the Police Chief. Does the city and Chief Pastirik feel he is above Illinois State law? Who provides legal advice for court action against FOIA violations?