Coles Co. (ECWd) –
We first exposed the City of Mattoon’s ignorance of public records laws in this article; however, things are pointing to an intentional attempt to suppress a public record.
The city denied a request for a copy of Officer AJ Roley’s job application. In doing so, they cited the following as their justification.
“5 ILCS 140 7(1 )(b)(ii) (Ch. 116, par. 207)(Text of Section from P.A. 96-261)”The following shall be exempt from inspection and copying: (b) Information that, if disclosed, would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, unless the disclosure is consented to in writing by the individual subjects of the information. The disclosure of information that bears on the public duties of public employees and officials shall not be considered an invasion of personal privacy. Information exempted under this subsection (b) shall include but is not limited to:
(ii) personnel files and personal information maintained with respect to employees, appointees or elected officials of any public body or applicants for those positions.
One would think our law enforcement would know what the actual law is, considering they are the ones required to enforce our laws. In this case, they cite a NON-EXISTENT statute in our current law. In fact, the cited statute was approximately 10 years old and clearly not current law.
Upon seeing their response and knowing it was bogus, I submitted my own FOIA request for the job application and made a notation for them regarding the Attorney General’s Binding opinion on such a record.
“AG Binding Opinion 14-015 provides the basis that the application is subject to FOIA.”
I received a response from the city that was much different than the one they cited to another. The city did not deny my request and provided the requested application, as found in this link or viewed below.
We have asked the City Police Chief, who came up with this statutory language for the denial to Dalton Smith, and he has not responded. We also asked the city attorney, and his terse response was that he can’t discuss attorney-client privilege information. Such a statement tends to indicate it was the lawyer who provided it, which, if true, would be privileged information. If the attorney provided the outdated language, we suggest the city find a new attorney, as it appears he simply advocates for his client’s desires rather than provide sound legal counsel. Stay tuned for another bomb shell exposure by the city when it comes to one of their ordinances and how they added language contrary to state law.
The attorney also indicated they were amending the response to Dalton Smith. We note that the amended response to Smith appears to be a result of our request exposing that the record is, in fact, subject to FOIA.
Did the lawyer and City Chief intentionally use outdated language in the FOIA denial as an attempt to suppress a police officer’s application for employment? Doing so would indicate that the denial, a public record, may constitute a false document under our current forgery laws.
Numerous other FOIA requests have been submitted due to what appear to be red flags we see in the actual application. As those records are provided, if they exist, we will update with a new article on the matter.
FOIA-ROLEY APPLICATION
