Fahner backs revisions in open meetings law

MEMBERS of governing boards would no longer have been able to meet informally — in public or private — to discuss government business under a proposal that Attorney General Tyrone Fahner had recommended as the most significant revision in the state's open meetings law in more than 10 years. Fahner had made this his No. 2 legislative priority for the session.

Regarding state government, revisions in the open meetings law would have, perhaps, most directly affected the Governor's Purchased Care Review Board, which has sometimes closed its sessions to legislators and reporters. (The board is an ad hoc group Thompson created three years ago to set rates for all the physical and mental health care, except hospitals, purchased by the state.) Last fall, in an advisory ruling requested by disgruntled legislators, Fahner held that Thompson's ad hoc group was subject to the open meetings law.

Illinois has had an open meetings law for nearly 25 years, opening all meetings of governing bodies to the public with the following exceptions: jury deliberations, rate-setting meetings of the Illinois Commerce Commission, some meetings of the General Assembly, and portions of meetings of school, village, township, city, county and other boards that deal with the acquisition of real estate, collective bargaining, criminal investigations and pending litigation. And the statute bars governing bodies from taking final action during closed sessions. But Illinois' law has been ambiguous, chiefly because it doesn't clearly define what constitutes a meeting. As a result, the attorney general's staff spends more time interpreting the open meetings law than it does any other statute.

The Illinois Supreme Court recently upheld the constitutionality of Illinois' open meetings law, in the first such test of the act, in People ex rel. Thomas J. Defanis, State's A ttorney, v. Joan Barr et al., in a 5-2 decision December 18.

Tightening the meeting definition loophole has long been an issue. In a move perhaps calculated to neutralize the publicity generated for the Republican attorney general, Democrats worked equally hard to resolve the open meetings issue this session. House Minority Leader Michael Madigan formed a special committee to study the issue with the help of a special subcommittee that included representatives of the Illinois State Bar Association, the Illinois Freedom of Information Council (news media), the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters of Illinois, the Illinois Municipal League and the Illinois Association of School Boards.

H.B. 411, sponsored for Fahner by Rep. Jim Reilly (R., Jacksonville), would tighten the loophole defining a meeting as any gathering of a majority of the quorum of the members which is held to discuss government business. The bill originally provided that meetings between three or more members (two if three constituted a quorum) liable under the law, but the House amended that language to favor the broader definition.

Fahner would, however, reduce the time the news media or the public have to file a civil lawsuit alleging violations from 90 to 45 days. But at the same time he would stiffen the penalties for violators by authorizing judges to:

•   open the closed session;

•  grant an injunction against more closed sessions;

•   invalidate any action taken at a closed session.

The House overwhelmingly passed Fahner's proposal (which required a three-fifths, or 107, vote, since it pre-empted home rule), 133-8, May 20.

S.B. 725, sponsored by Sen. Terry Bruce (D., Olney), basically identical to Reilly's bill, would have repealed the old open meetings law and replaced it with a new one in an effort to substitute precise new language for the old, vague wording. The measure was also an effort to incorporate recent court rulings that have clarified the intent of the existing law. Bruce's proposal, which also required a three-fifths, or 30, vote, failed in the Senate.

S.B. 793, sponsored by Sen. Leroy Lemke (D., Chicago), chairman of the Senate Elections Committee, would create an additional exemption to the open meetings law, requested by the State Board of Elections.

The state board, a quasi-judicial agency now fully subject to the law, has requested the exemption apparently in an effort to protect the rights of candidates or citizen petition circulators who may be falsely accused of wrongdoing.

Lemke's proposal would allow the state board to close its initial fact-finding hearing on alleged misconduct. Should the state board decide, after the closed fact-finding hearing, that there are grounds for misconduct charges, all subsequent hearings would remain open.

Lemke's proposal was sent back to the Senate Executive Committee.

Diane Ross

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