It is hard to know how to respond when someone twice your age, a democratically elected official, and supposed community leader carefully calculates that committing crimes against her constituents is better than honest dialogue.
That is, after all, what Diane Marlin did when she decided to violate the Open Meetings Acts on September 14th, she committed a crime. The State’s Attorney, Julia Rietz, can and should bring charges against Marlin, but Rietz is little more than a vain politician and in Champaign County, corrupt and unscrupulous public officials stick together.
Marlin violated the Open Meetings Act in multiple ways. She tried to independently change the formally established and recorded Urbana City Council meeting rules by establishing shorter time limits for public input. She placed content-based restrictions on public input, and she actively interrupted and muted Urbana residents who began to say things that she disagreed with.
Marlin didn’t make a quick mistake in the heat of the moment, she planned this. She sent out an email to the council members before the meeting indicating her plan (shown in my article here), then she read a similar statement before public input at the meeting. Then she committed the mentioned Open Meetings Act violations, which you can watch here:
It isn’t clear what Marlin thought she was going to gain by doing this. Maybe she gets a few pats on the back by the few people who are tired of hearing residents complain, but now she’s created a much bigger problem.
Freedom of speech is an issue that elicits staunch support from the nearly the entire political spectrum. This move by Marlin won’t just attract local criticism – this is exactly the kind of thing that draws the attention of free speech and open meetings watchdogs from around the state. Of course, the News Gazette won’t report on this because that failing paper and their lead attorney, Traci Nally, are in the same friend group as Marlin, Rietz, Deb Feinen, etc, but it won’t be long before quaint Urbana draws in outside attention.
Marlin also said that she would be bringing new public input legislation forth to the Urbana City Council shortly, so unfortunately, we can probably look forward to more efforts by Marlin to gag people who don’t step in line with her political agenda.
All that this is going to lead to is a lawsuit for Urbana, a lot of wasted resources, more upset Urbana residents, and after all that, an eventual apology from Diane Marlin. Marlin could bypass all of that waste, and improve Urbana at the same time, if she just issued that apology now and changed her posture to one of commitment to free speech and public participation.
-Christopher Hansen, Urbana
Indeed, a barrier to honest discussion is the lack of a sincere apology.
The CUPD chief missed an opportunity to offer an apology when he spoke about the investigation. I was reminded of the Rock Island County Sheriff’s public offering of a sincere apology as a result of local law enforcement officers treatment of an EIU swim team student-athlete a couple of years ago. The RICC Sheriff’s offer struck a goodwill chord with my person. Also, as the CUPD chief discussed the investigation, he did not convey a sense of gratitude for others having uncovered a legitimate gun safety position issue. As such, the CUPD chief missed another opportunity to offer the public goodwill…his sense of gratitude.