Effingham, IL. (ECWd) –
How do you know a public board is trying to hide things?
- Changing rules to make things harder for citizens
- Intimidate those attending meetings
- Try to revoke the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States
- Find unique and illegal ways to try and take rights away from meeting attendees
- Fabricate rules that violate peoples property rights
Apparently either the entire county board attended a class, or the chairman attended a class that taught them they could come up with rules for recording public meetings.
I hope nobody paid for the class, or if they did, I hope they demand their money back.
We find it hard to believe anyone would recommend adopting rules that are obvious civil rights violations and Open Meetings Act violations.
Laugh at these rules yourself:
- Requiring people recording to sign in prior to recording any meeting they plan to record
- Requiring people to supply their name in order to record
- Requiring people to identify the type of media they are recording the meeting on
- Treating cell phone video and other types of video differently
- Intimidating people recording by alleging that all video and audio recordings are subject to subpoena – even though we all know about “Reporter’s Privilege” which obviously this county board chairman is unaware of
- Further intimidating people by demanding that people recording either 1) Keep all audio and video in its entirety., or, 2) delete it in its entirety – unless it has been subpoenaed
- Taking away all First Amendment Rights from people recording by making wild and crazy claims that a person recording must agree not to edit the content of the video in any manner that a reasonable person (unlike those persons who approved this unreasonable policy) would believe changes the meaning or context of the audio or video from its original meaning or context.
- Threatening expulsion from meetings or to have the Sheriff remove them from meetings if they do not comply with this unreasonable policy
Copy of the UNREASONABLE rules attached (here).
Yes, we filed a complaint with the Attorney General.
Watch the County Board Chairman attempt to enforce his unlawful policy (it starts at about the 5:04 mark):
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