Voting board members given 30 minutes to analyze Hinsdale teachers’ contract

In January, I wrote about my ordeal in obtaining my local school district’s collective bargaining agreement. The public, including taxpayers like me, wasn’t allowed to examine the new teachers’ contract until 38 days after the contract was approved by the board. Once I finally got ahold of the contract I found out the teacher salary raises were...

In January, I wrote about my ordeal in obtaining my local school district’s collective bargaining agreement. The public, including taxpayers like me, wasn’t allowed to examine the new teachers’ contract until 38 days after the contract was approved by the board. Once I finally got ahold of the contract I found out the teacher salary raises were much larger than the district originally explained.

In that blog post I wrote, “This lack of transparency … is a scene being played out time and time again all over the state of Illinois.”

And it’s not just citizens who are complaining about this problem. Board members across the state have been reporting to us that even they are having problems getting hold of proposed collective bargaining agreements before it’s time to vote on them.

Consider the case of Hinsdale High School District 86 board members Dianne Barrett and Richard Skoda.

Recently, the district voted on a new collective bargaining agreement between the district and the teachers. The agreement passed by a 6-1 margin.

A recent Chicago Tribune article described dissenting board member Dianne Barrett feelings on the agreement:

She said board members did not receive details of the contract until they were in executive session, which she said did not allow them time to make a fiscally responsible decision on it.

It’s one thing when a citizen can’t get ahold of a contract until 38 days after it has been signed; but Barrett barely had any time to analyze a contract before she was asked to vote on it.

Board member Richard Skoda, who ultimately voted for the collective bargaining agreement, was quoted as saying:

“It is unacceptable to expect thoughtful board members to discuss and analyze complex salary schedules, health insurance and retirement changes, and extra duty reimbursement in a 30-minute period, especially when remembering that salaries and benefits comprise 80 percent of our budget.”

Furthermore, Barrett complained:

“The teachers’ union had 11 days to review the contract, but the board didn’t not allow taxpayers an opportunity to review the contract for which they are paying.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t an exception. In Illinois, this is the norm.

However, lawmakers have filed a number of bills in Springfield to address the issue, including two bills authored by state Rep. Jeanne Ives, R-Wheaton.

The first is House Bill 3310. The “Truth-in-Collective Bargaining” bill would amend the Open Meetings Act requiring collective bargaining meetings to be conducted in public, and amend the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requiring all the documentation from collective bargaining negotiations to be treated as public records obtainable by citizens under FOIA law. This bill has been assigned to the State Government Administration Committee and is awaiting a hearing.

Another bill that was voted down was House Bill 2689, which would have required that once a collective bargaining agreement is agreed upon in principle the unit of local government would be required to post the contract online for a minimum of 14 days before holding an open public meeting for citizens to comment. Only after the hearing could a vote occur. This would have given the public time to examine the details of the contract and provide appropriate feedback to the elected officials.

Both of the reforms are long overdue and would go a long way in stopping the type of abuses seen in Hinsdale High School District 86, Aptakisic-Tripp School District 102 and many other districts across the state.