Youth home decision flunks transparency

During the past week, there have been two public hearings about the proposal to close DuPage County’s award-winning youth detention center, and in both cases the experts and the general public expressed unanimous support for keeping the center open.

The first hearing was a remarkable bipartisan outpouring of support. There wasn’t a single witness to rebut the strong testimony from experts — judges, police chiefs and others who are in the best position to make judgments about the facility. Indeed, Judge Robert Anderson reiterated that “it’s 100 percent clear that everybody who does the work says this is a bad idea.”

At the end of the first hearing, and without offering the slightest response to the outcry from experts and the general public, the board voted to close the center. The second hearing was similar to the first in terms of the unanimity and strength of the opposition. And it added several new facts that may undercut some of the board’s cost-cutting rationale (e.g. cost-shifting to a local school district’s budget).

At the end of the second hearing, board member Robert Larson finally got up and said a (very) few words in support of closure. Essentially, his point was that the board had looked at the facts and evidence and concluded that closing the center is in the best interests of DuPage County.

The thing that strikes me about this response is its tone-deafness and its non-transparency. Is it enough to say, “Trust us, we’ve got this” when the unanimous outcry from a bipartisan group of experts suggests that you’ve made the wrong decision? And why did the pro-closure faction decide not to provide any evidence or rebuttal at the hearings?

Unless it holds further hearings to make its case, the pro-closure faction has flunked Transparency 101.

Greg Brownfield

Bartlett