The long-overdue review of the Springfield
City Council’s private meetings has prompted one alderman to
spill the beans on what his colleagues have been doing behind
closed doors. At the council’s July 5 meeting, Ward 3 Ald.
Frank Kunz bolted from an executive session, fuming about his
fellow council members’ reluctance to release minutes of past
private sessions, as required by law.
“I got on my soapbox and did my
flag-waving ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ speech that kinda
went over everybody’s head,” Kunz says, “and
since it was obvious that I was going to lose every vote, I walked
out — no sense staying in there.”
State law permits governing bodies such as the
City Council to meet in closed “executive session” to
discuss lawsuits, personnel matters, and other sensitive business.
However, state law also requires that the minutes of these
executive sessions be reviewed every six months and released to the
public once the need for confidentiality ceases to exist.
The council is now undertaking its first such
review, and corporation counsel Jenifer Johnson can’t explain
why aldermen have not complied with the state-mandated review
schedule.
“I guess it was an oversight that it
wasn’t done before,” Johnson says, “so we went
back and looked at two years’ worth.”
The result is a draft ordinance, to be
discussed July 18 by the council’s public-affairs committee,
that lists eight executive sessions proposed for full release and
another five executive sessions for which portions of the minutes
can be released. Six other executive sessions not listed in the
ordinance will remain entirely confidential.
But even the documents designated for complete disclosure probably won’t provide much
information.
“The minutes that we’re proposing
to release are very, very cursory,” says City Clerk Cecilia
Tumulty.
All but one of the sessions listed for full
release were held before Mayor Tim Davlin took office in April
2003. Under the previous administration, executive-session minutes
offered few details: date and time of the meeting, a list of
aldermen in attendance, and the topic of discussion — the
caption of a lawsuit, for example.
Don Craven, attorney for the Illinois Press
Association, says that such bare-bones documentation did not comply
with the state requirement that a summary of discussion be
included.
The mere title of a lawsuit doesn’t
suffice. “That’s not a summary of the
discussion,” he says.
Tumulty, who was the Ward 5 alderwoman during
those executive sessions, says that she began expanding the scope
of the minutes shortly after taking office as city clerk.
“I followed the precedent that [former
corporation counsel] Bob Rogers sent over to me when he
exited,” she says. “However, once there were a couple
of cases that started coming through executive session, I felt it
was important to be a little more forthcoming with what was
discussed.”
She also began making digital audio recordings
of every executive session to comply with a law requiring verbatim
records of all meetings, and she says that she would like to see
these recordings used — and released to the public — as
the official minutes of executive sessions.
“My personal opinion is that, with a
couple of exceptions, the minutes should just be released,
including the audiotapes,” Tumulty says.
Kunz agrees.
“I believe the tape should be released,
and she should edit out anything that should not be
released,” he says.
The council adopted an ordinance in September
2004 providing the release of tapes for public inspection 18 months
after the session, on the approval of the corporation counsel.
Johnson, however, says that audio recordings
are not even covered under the Open Meetings Act and should not be
substituted for the minutes of a meeting.
“I don’t think the tape’s
the minutes,” she says.
The City Council could vote on the measure as
early as July 19.
This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2005.
