At the July 26th, 2022 meeting of the Champaign City Council, local attorney and Council member Tom Bruno made some blatantly false legal claims regarding the Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA).
A member of the public had expressed disappointment that City Council members had not attended a recent community event about the increase in gun crime. In response, Bruno claimed that it would have been illegal for more than two Council members to attend such an event without notice to the public; apparently citing the clause in the OMA that requires public bodies to post meeting agendas 48 hours before public meetings.
Bruno’s exact words: “Without adequate notice to post that as a public meeting, it would have been a violation for a third or more Council members to show up.”
This claim made by Bruno, a licensed criminal defense attorney, is simply not supported by law. Any portion of the members of a public body are entirely free to attend events, including events related to subjects of public business.
One is only required to read a few sentences into the OMA to acquire the necessary legal knowledge:
Section 1.02 of the OMA: “Meeting” means any gathering, whether in person or by video or audio conference, telephone call, electronic means (such as, without limitation, electronic mail, electronic chat, and instant messaging), or other means of contemporaneous interactive communication, of a majority of a quorum of the members of a public body held for the purpose of discussing public business or, for a 5-member public body, a quorum of the members of a public body held for the purpose of discussing public business.
If the members of the public body do not meet for the purpose of discussing public business and do not engage in “contemporaneous interactive communication” with each other about matters of public business, then the gathering is not a “meeting” as defined by the Act.
If attorney Bruno’s assertion were correct, three Council members would be committing crimes if they were to all find themselves in the same grocery store at the same time.
Mr. Bruno’s comments at the July 26th Champaign City Council meeting can be viewed below:
Thank you for holding Bruno accountable! I believe he’s a toxic being apart of City Council for so long. Shows he doesn’t really want to be apart of the solution.
It says “for the purpose of discussing public business.”
I appreciate the work done here on this site so keep up the good work. However, this article seriously detracts from your credibility.
You accuse Tom Bruno of making “blatantly false legal claims” regarding the Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA) based on your own cursory reading of the act. Your interpretation seems to be based on the idea that since “If attorney Bruno’s assertion were correct, three Council members would be committing crimes if they were to all find themselves in the same grocery store at the same time” and that would in your opinion be absurd then his interpretation must incorrect and false.
However, you fail to appreciate that if the hypothetical situation you described were to occur (incidental meeting at grocery store ) AND they happened to start to discuss public business THEN YES, they would likely be in violation of the act if the discussion was more than casual. But the actual situation discussed by Tom is even more clear cut then your hypothetical strawman and would be a clear violation of the act as it would have been intentional and blatant disregard of OMA.
The Illinois Attorney General has opined that a gathering need not be prearranged and set as to time, nor need it be an official meeting in order to come within the purview of the Act. Discussing public business means refers to “an exchange of views and ideas among public body members, on any item germane to the affairs of their public body.” “It is not directed at casual remarks, but . . . at discussions that are deliberative in nature.”
See 1974 Op. Att’y. Gen. No. S-726.
See also “A Reference Guide to the Illinois Open Meetings Act”.
In the future, I would suggest you research topics more thoroughly, seek references or authorities to back up your assertions, and/or use a copy editor especially for technical and nuanced topics such as interpreting statue.
In the grocery store hypothetical, the three Council members merely have to refrain from discussing public business to avoid an OMA violation.
It is the same in Tom Bruno’s feared scenario (in fact, the venue is entirely irrelevant).
It isn’t a violation for three or more Council members to find themselves in the same place, which is what Bruno was claiming.
Any OMA violation feared by Bruno could have been avoided by him simply not speaking to two or more other City Council members about public business at the community gathering.
That’s why his claim that it would be a violation per se was wrong.
Nothing that you have cited disagrees with this analysis.