Oak Brook Park District Forcing Commissioner To Sign Nondisclosure Agreement –

Oak Brook, Ill. (ECWd) –

The Oak Brook Park District has apparently decided that in order to receive unredacted attorney invoices, an elected Park District Commissioner must sign a nondisclosure agreement and threatening legal action against the commissioner if they do not comply with the district’s demands.

Public Officials have access to the public records of the public body and cannot be forced to sign any nondisclosure agreement. The only statute in Illinois that restricts a public official’s access to any records is contained in the Open Meetings Act, Section 2.06(e) and it deals with closed session recordings and “how” they are accessed and stored, not “if” they can be accessed.

When one statute restricts specific records, it acts as a prohibition on restricting other records since the legislature, if they wanted other records restricted, could have restricted those also, but chose not to do so.

We could find no law permitting a park district to condition the access of records to the signing of a nondisclosure agreement.

Park District Commissioners are elected by the public and should have access to the records of the park district. They are required to vote on payment of the attorney invoices and must be given access to those unredacted invoices to ensure they are proper, without being forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement and without threat of legal action.