City Pays $4K, Cedes Records, in Champaign County Community Coalition Lawsuit

After initially denying a public records request, the City of Champaign, Illinois agreed to provide the records and pay the legal fees incurred by Check CU founder Christopher Hansen in response to an associated lawsuit.

In March of 2022, Check CU published an article describing a rather blatant public records violation by the City of Champaign, Illinois. We had asked the City for some fairly benign records regarding meetings of the Champaign County Community Coalition (CCCC), which the City of Champaign Legal Department promptly denied.

For some reason, the City of Champaign was claiming that all records related to the CCCC were shielded from public records requests.

The CCCC was founded and funded by the City of Champaign in 2010. The Coalition is now also funded with taxpayer dollars from more than a dozen public bodies, including the City of Urbana, the University of Illinois, and the Champaign County Sheriff’s Office.

For the most part, the CCCC serves as a meeting place for local politicians and public officials to gather and make short speeches and announcements, and occasionally give presentations. The most savory portion of these meetings tends to be the part where the various police chiefs and the sheriff give local crime updates.

The Coalition is organized and operated by full time employees of the City of Champaign, and they hold their meetings during working hours. The CCCC utilizes a City of Champaign email address, phone number, and physical address.

The “Executive Committee” of the Coalition is made up of two dozen individuals, almost all of whom are public officials. The Committee is chaired by Champaign City Manager Dorothy Ann David, and membership includes, among others, State’s Attorney Julia Rietz, CUPHD Administrator Julie Pryde, County Sheriff Dustin Heuerman, Urbana City Administrator Carol Mitten, and until her recent departure, U of I Police Chief Alice Cary.

Despite all of the above, when we asked for a few simple meeting records such as agendas and minutes, City of Champaign Assistant City Attorney Nancy Rabel said that “it is the City’s position that the Freedom of Information Act is not applicable to the Champaign County Community Coalition and that “public records” do not exist.”

Rabel’s interpretation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) simply did not make sense, and could not make sense to any person who has even vaguely glanced at the FOIA statute. Notably, Rabel had cc’d her records denial to City Attorney Frederick Stavins, and to her fellow Assistant City Attorneys Jennifer Glover, Kathryn Cataldo, and Thomas Yu, who all presumably agreed with Rabel’s determination.

It is also worth noting that just two months prior to Rabel’s unlawful FOIA denial, the City of Champaign paid $5k to settle a different FOIA lawsuit (filed by Check CU) based on an unlawful denial issued by Assistant City Attorney Jennifer Glover. One would think Champaign’s Legal Department would have started exercising a bit more diligence.

Since Champaign’s Legal Department was clearly violating Illinois public records laws with the CCCC denial, we filed another lawsuit with the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court in March of 2022. Three months later, Rabel provided the records she had previously denied. In September of 2023, the Champaign Legal Department agreed to pay our legal fees (as is required by statute when a public body issues an unlawful FOIA denial). The relatively small ($4,000) sum for legal fees reflects the fact that Champaign pretty quickly realized they were wrong, provided the records, and we didn’t ultimately need to go to court.

A copy of the settlement agreement is shown below (click for full 3 page PDF):