Kate Piercy’s Testimony on the Open Meetings Act

On March 10 Kate Piercy testified before the Illinois House of Representatives State Government Administration Committee in regards to improvements in the Open Meetings Act. Read her testimony.

On March 10 Kate Piercy testified before the Illinois House of Representatives State Government Administration Committee in regards to improvements in the Open Meetings Act.

Download a copy of her testimony here.

Chairperson Franks, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Kate Piercy, and I am the Director of Government Reform for the Illinois Policy Institute. We are a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to supporting free market principles and liberty-based public policy initiatives. The Institute conducts research and analysis on a variety of matters, including fiscal policy, education, government reform, health care, and transportation. You can learn more about our organization by visiting www.IllinoisPolicy.org.

I’m here today to support the recommendations put forward in HB 5483, which would make important improvements to the current Open Meetings Act by requiring more timely disclosure of meeting minutes. This legislation would apply not only to approved minutes but also proposed minutes, which turns attention to a critical problem in the current Open Meetings Act.

Currently Illinois state law provides no timetable during which draft minutes from public meetings must be approved.  This means that – while minutes are recorded during each meeting – public bodies are not required to disclose them until officially approved. One example highlighting this problem and why it’s crucial to include the provision about proposed minutes involves the University of Illinois.

In August of last year, a colleague of mine from the Illinois Policy Institute was attempting to locate the 2009 meeting minutes of the Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois. He was notified by the President’s office that they had not yet been made public.  In turn, he sent FOIA requests to the University of Illinois requesting the minutes. The administration, however, refused to disclose regular minutes from 2009 Board of Trustees monthly meetings, making my colleague wait to receive 9-months worth of meeting minutes until they were provided to him in September.

Additionally, minutes for several meetings in 2008 took over a year to be posted online.

Such delays are unacceptable for a public board – and any level of government – that spends taxpayer dollars.

The University of Illinois was able to get around the FOIA requests by not officially approving minutes, which made it possible for them to delay providing meeting minutes to my colleague because the minutes were not by definition “approved.” Their motives for delaying the release of minutes were never made clear, though this certainly took place during a time in which the University of Illinois would have done well to make extra effort to be open and transparent.

The University hid behind the language of the current Open Meetings Act, which only requires the disclosure of approved minutes and mentions nothing of proposed minutes.

Therefore, in the spirit of true transparency and continually working to improve and establish the most open and accountable government possible, the bill before you provides a much-needed improvement to the Open Meetings Act, and it would help to avoid putting the public or a citizen in situations such as the circumstance the Illinois Policy Institute encountered with the University of Illinois.

We laud the effort to require timely disclosure of meeting minutes, which would contribute in creating more transparent and accountable government at all levels in Illinois.

The Illinois Policy Institute agrees with the improvements introduced by Rep. Kosel through HB 5483, and encourages others to support it.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.