Daily Herald opinion: Honest mistake or something else? Tollway board’s odd open meetings oversight deserves a response

It may be that the Illinois Tollway Board of Directors did not intend to violate the state Open Meetings Act last week when it came out of executive session without telling a reporter and others who were waiting outside a closed door. But the case certainly warrants the attorney general’s office review it is getting based on a request from our Marni Pyke.

Early in their Thursday, Aug. 29, meeting, board members went into executive session presumably for reasons allowed under the Open Meetings Act, which include personnel matters, litigation and contract or sales issues. Pyke, tollway employees and visitors attending the meeting were ushered out and waited patiently for nearly an hour for the board to return to open session.

Then, as board members exited the room, the observers were told the board had in fact returned to open session and finished its business — which included voting on about $40 million worth of contracts, a $3.2 million construction change order and a controversial $25 million legal settlement.

Oops. They had forgotten to open the door to let the public back into the meeting, but not to worry, they had remembered to turn the livestream video system back on, so no harm, no foul. They had met the requirements of the law.

“All of the board action to approve the items on the August board agenda took place in a public session on the live video stream. It was live for anybody to watch, and then the recording was made public immediately after the meeting was adjourned,” spokeswoman Joelle McGinnis said later.

Maybe so. But televising board action with the public out of sight and kept at a distance is hardly representative of the state’s expectations — or of a board’s commitment — regarding transparency in the conduct of the public’s business. To be sure, livestreamed and video-recorded meetings enable convenient public access to board meetings and were vital during the most-intense months of the pandemic when public gatherings were discouraged and sometimes even forbidden.

But we are no longer in a COVID crisis, and visitors attend the Tollway board meeting with the reasonable expectation of being able to watch members in person and, if they choose, to engage them at some point regarding the decisions they would make. Moreover, the board’s ability to remember to re-engage its video system while forgetting it had a live audience waiting outside — innocent or not — naturally leads to suspicion that it was hiding or avoiding something.

Maybe it wasn’t. But the public should not be left to wonder, and it does no service to the concept of open government to make them.

As Pyke reports today, the attorney general’s office is seeking a written response from the Tollway board, including explanations about how the board transitioned out of the closed session and “whether the Board informed the in-person members of the public that the open session had resumed.”

On that final point, only two “yes” answers seem possible. Yes, the in-person audience members would have been informed if they happened to be watching the livestream on their cellphones in the hall. And, yes, audience members eventually learned they could go back into the board room — after the board had voted and the meeting was over.

Neither of those situations is very satisfying. It will be interesting to see what the attorney general’s review concludes.

McGinnis said that at the board’s meeting later this month, Chairman Arnie Rivera will “affirm the action taken at the August meeting.” That may be an acceptable procedural response. At least equally appropriate, it would seem, would be a better explanation of the circumstances and a sincere apology to the public.