As MHS learns, convenience counts in openness too
Would you travel four hours and 250 miles to attend a school board meeting?
The sad truth is most residents won’t drive even a few miles to hear critical discussions about education and taxes.
But convenience still was at the heart of an attorney general’s ruling last week, scolding the Mundelein High School District 120 school board for its decision to host a board meeting in Macomb. The office said the district violated the Opening Meetings Act. The ruling was made even though the meeting was in September, there is no way to rectify what happened and there are no fines or penalties to be imposed.
The issue here was not punishment so much as education. The attorney general wisely reminded the board and the rest of us that open, accessible government is important, and the state’s Open Meetings law is its guarantee.
In recent years, the act has been improved and invoked to address technological advances like email, digital recording and other means of electronic communication that make private meetings easier and complicate the public’s access to government. It also states that public meetings “must be held at times and places convenient and open to the public.”
That didn’t happen on Saturday, Sept. 10.
That’s when a District 120 board quorum — three trustees — traveled to Western Illinois University to investigate a turf product under consideration for the high school stadium.
The meeting was properly advertised and transportation was available to any member of the public who was interested in accompanying board members to Macomb. Lake County Assistant State’s Attorney Dan Jasica even told the Daily Herald he saw no legal problem. “You can’t bring the Macomb artificial turf to Mundelein,” he said, and of course he has a point.
But the attorney general’s office ruled the time and distance involved would have “deterred all but the most stalwart” from attending.
“Requiring a citizen to embark on a 12-hour, 500-mile trip on a Saturday in order to attend a meeting cannot be characterized as ‘convenient,’” Assistant Attorney General Matthew C. Rogina wrote in his opinion.
And that is not just an academic concern. Without the act and its insistence on convenience, a body less principled than Dist. 120 may well use an opportunity like this — or even manufacture one — to carry on discussions out of the public’s earshot. And there were options, such as delegating the task to administrators or sending fewer board members to view the field and report back.
District 120 officials later said there was no intention to circumvent the act, and we do not doubt them, especially considering the lengths to which they went to include the public. But Illinois has a long history of governments winking at openness. This ruling is notice that convenience counts for everyone.