McHenry Co. (ECWd) -
A request for review was filed with the Attorney General Public Access Office (AG PAC) regarding an alleged Open Meetings Act violation by the Algonquin Township Board during their April 11th, 2018 meeting.
This is an allegation that the Algonquin: Township Board has violated the Open Meetings Act in the following way:
- Taking action on an item not placed on the agenda as an item to take action on.
- Agenda did not set forth the general subject matter which was actually acted on. The agenda stated: " Reconfiguration of Office Space" when the vote was to actually " move" ( not reconfigure) the Road District 's office ( and not the office of the public body of the township) and records to a different building(s).
- This item, as listed on the agenda, lead the public to believe there would only be discussion on reconfiguring the office space of the Township of Algonquin, not of actually moving the offices and records of the Algonquin Road District.
AG Response in part:
Mr. Kraft contends that the agenda item "Reconfiguration of Office Space", did not adequately inform the public that the Board would be voting to "move" the Road District' s office. We construe the Request for Review as alleging a violation of section 2. 02( c) ( 5 ILCS 120/ 2. 02( c) ( West 2016)) of OMA.
In your response, please clarify whether the Board voted to move the Road District' s office and, if so, address whether the agenda for the April 11, 2018, Board meeting set forth the general subject matter of that final action, as required by section 2.02( c) of OMA.
Considering they did vote to move the office and they did not set forth the general subject matter on their agenda, we suspect the AG will rule that the Algonquin Township violated the Open Meetings Act. We suspect they will default to their attorney to answer this request for review, which is going to rack up more legal bills because of their childish actions against the Road District Highway Commissioner.
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1 Comment
Jannie
Posted at 18:52h, 19 AprilTrust me if the public agency has a good lawyer they’ll work their way around it. In our area I have it from a person who contacted the PAC about an agenda discussion item which instead action was taken ” however, in a letter from the Lawyer to the PAC he stated council never voted, but the Ex. Dir. “decided” to do the action. PAC accepted that. go figure. So trust me anything can happen.