Breaking: City of Evanston Violated Open Meetings Act
“That’s how the law works, it’s not within a million miles of an OMA [Open Meetings Act] violation.” -- Mayor Biss
Update 3/8/2024 - Changed some of the numbers on how many people constitute a “majority of a quorum” which is the guideline for an OMA violation.
Hello from New Orleans, where I am at the Association for Materials Protection and Performance 2024 Annual Conference. Some of you have wondered what I do for a living, I work the corrosion (of metal) business. Turns out, I also write on the corrosion of good governance!
Today’s story is a follow up to my story from last week, where I argued the City Council violated the IL Open Meetings Act (OMA) in authorizing the City Manager to sign an exclusivity agreement with a commercial real estate agent, Steven Spinell at JLL.
Today the Illinois Attorney General issued a binding letter confirming that the City Council of Evanston, did indeed violate the OMA. You can read the binding AG PAC letter here.
Turns out, my initial argument was wrong on a couple of points, so here’s a small correction:
A gathering of 3 or more Evanston City Councilmembers1 for public business discussion is considered a meeting. It doesn’t matter whether they are voting on anything or not, as long as they are discussing public business (such as discussing an exclusivity contract)
The OMA has nothing to do with the size of a contract signed. In this case, the city’s comment about it not being a violation because it was less than a $25,000 contract is a moot point.
In fact, on that last point, the Attorney General’s office really delivers a solid take-down to the city’s argument:
Behind closed doors, the City Council agreed to bind the City to an agreement with a particular firm that requires, among other things, a potential expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars of public funds if the Civic Center is sold. The City Council did not subsequently take final action on the matter in open session. The $25,000 threshold the City Council cited in its response to this office is irrelevant to whether the City Council took final action in closed session.
It is worth noting that Councilmember Devon Reid walked out of the meeting where the violation occurred. Mr. Reid stated the following in a following:
I feel that some of the discussions that we had in executive session were inappropriate and should’ve happened in open session, in fact, I left a meeting because I felt we were violating the spirit and really, the letter, of the Open Meetings Act.
I absolutely commend Councilmember Reid for both walking out of the meeting and standing up for this in a public session, while Mayor Biss continued to argue that an OMA violation occurred.2
Next Steps
What does this mean for plans to move the City to 909 Davis? Well, I’m not sure. The Evanston Roundtable has good coverage on this, probably better than what I could write (and with better photojournalism!)
However, I do think there are some next steps in terms of transparency and governance.
I’ve requested a copy of meeting minutes.
I’ve requested a video recording of the executive session.
I think the city probably should put this real estate contract out for RFP; it’s not like there’s only a single commercial real estate agent in this town.
In general, I think it is very exciting to see a ruling like this - I have an unsubstantiated belief that the Open Meetings Act is violated more often than anyone is aware. The primary reason for this is that in order for an OMA violation to found, someone in the closed session meeting needs to stand up and tell a journalist or, as Mr. Reid did, walk out. In cases where an entire public body works in lockstep, I’m not sure there is anyone willing to raise the red flag.3
The law states a “Majority of a Quorum” - so if there is a 9 member body, then 5 is quorum and therefore 3 is a majority of that.
This is a topic for another day, but I believe the media treatment of Mr. Reid, especially in EvanstonNow has been unjustified. I’ve found him to be one of the most serious members when it comes to good governance, and especially their story about “nude beaches” was an unfair attack.
For instance, I’ve heard rumors that the District 65 Board has discussed me in closed session. There’s no particular exemption for discussing annoying citizen journalists in the Open Meetings Act and this would certainly be a violation. But unless someone was willing to come forward and disclose this violation, it remains a fiction.
In fact, JLL is not "a commercial real estate agent in this town." It is based in Winnetka.
Reid gets the occasional thing right, but his lack of pragmatism on tonnes of issues (like, say, his advocacy for a ban on cashless businesses) plus his frequent temper-tantrums shows to me that he is not a serious character.
He seems to scour the news for whatever new thing is being tried in Berkeley, Brooklyn, or San Fran and tries to push it in Evanston without the slightest regard for whether the conditions in Evanston may be different.
He was an unmitigated disaster as Clerk--posting sexual assault victims' names and unredacted minors' arrest records on the internet. He royally screwed up the basic elements of the clerk's job such as taking minutes for council meetings and fulfilling FOIAs.
Maybe I shouldn't have been, but I was amazed that he was elected to clerk given his lack of experience in the workplace and his campaign focused on stuff not even related to being clerk, like affordable housing.
The only reason he got elected clerk was because he was successfully able to leverage a problematic encounter with EPD to exploit the liberal guilt of the average Evanston resident.