Records provided by the Village of Carpentersville have Urbana residents asking even more questions about Mayor Diane Marlin’s questionable appointment of Curt Borman as Urbana’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Officer.
It was already known that Curt Borman used to be a police officer for Skokie, IL. However, the public was not aware that before the City of Urbana hired him in 2007, Borman spent three years working as the “Administrative Assistant to the Chief of Police” for the Village of Carpentersville. Records from Carpentersville also show that Borman bragged that he “consistently eclipsed peers in arrests and other self-initiated activity” while working as a police officer.
It is not obvious that Borman’s claim is a demonstration of anything positive for the community. Indeed, a higher rate of arrests and “self-initiated activity” could easily mean that Borman was simply a spiteful and violent cop who frequently arrested people without cause.
Mayor Marlin appointed Curt Borman to be Urbana’s new FOIA Officer on June 8th, 2020. Exactly one week prior, thousands of residents marched in front of the City Building demanding police reform.
Before Borman’s appointment in June, public records requests were always handled by the City Clerk, but Deputy City Clerk Wendy Hundley said that the City’s FOIA process is now under the control of the City Legal Department.
In response to increasing requests for police records, Curt Borman, along with City Attorney James Simon, crafted an illegal scheme for charging public records fees. Over the course of three months, the Urbana City legal department conspired to charge residents thousands of dollars of illegal FOIA fees, and denied records to any person unable to pay the fees.
Borman has also denied public records requests which attempt to acquire more information about these fees and how many people were charged. Borman has even denied FOIA requests about his own employment records with the City of Urbana. Luckily, Borman’s impropriety does not reach back to his old employer in Carpentersville. As Urbana becomes subject to more FOIA lawsuits, it will soon become clear if Borman’s corruption holds any sway in the courts.
All sixty-one pages of records provide by the Village of Carpentersville can be viewed here:
-Christopher Hansen, Urbana