On September 29th Check CU posted an article which described a stream of Open Meetings Act (OMA) violations by the Urbana City Council from May to August of 2021. The violations were in regards to the explicit statutory requirements placed upon public bodies to create, approve, maintain, and publicly post official minutes for their public meetings.
The OMA requirements for meeting minutes are important so that both elected public officials and private residents can ensure that the official records of the City are accurate. Without careful oversight, it would be possible for one individual to covertly fabricate false records – Check CU documented exactly such an incident wherein Urbana City Clerk Phyllis Clark illegally fabricated a Council vote.
On September 23rd, the Illinois Attorney General contacted Mayor Diane Marlin indicating their intent to investigate the alleged OMA violations. Assistant Attorney General Christopher Boggs asked Marlin to explain the failure of the City to create, approve, and post the required meeting records.
On September 28th, Urbana City Attorney David Wesner wrote a response for Mayor Marlin. Wesner completely ignored the allegations that the City Council had failed to create and approve meeting minutes within the time required by the OMA.
Instead, Wesner argued at length that the City of Urbana did not have enough staff to post meeting minutes to the City website, and further argued that the City of Urbana should be exempt from having to make such records available to the public.
Wesner argued that the assistant to the full-time City Clerk Phyllis Clark had resigned, and therefore the ability of the Clerk to post basic meeting documents was substantially diminished. Even if Wesner is right, and a full time Clerk needs a full time assistant in order to post basic meeting records, his argument still doesn’t align with reality. The alleged violations occurred from May to August 2021, and a new assistant City Clerk (Darcy Sandefur) was hired in May of 2021.
Check CU also notes the following:
- The City of Urbana has a budget of $48.9 million
- The City has about 250 full-time employees
- During the period in question, City of Urbana employees posted hundreds of other individual meeting documents to the City website, composed of thousands of pages
- During the period in question, Urbana City staff, working in their capacity as City employees, made approximately one thousand posts to various official social media pages for the City of Urbana
- During the period in question, the following City employees posted meeting documents to the City of Urbana website:
- Phyllis Clark
- Amanda Plotner
- Barb Stiehl
- Vivian Petrotte
- Kay Meharry
- HeatherAnn Hicks-Layman
- Jason Liggett
- Tamra Corbin
- Teri Andel
- Shelby Mammano
- Darcy Sandefur
- Lemond Peppers
- Elizabeth Borman
- Elizabeth Hannan
- April Smysor
- Sanford Hess
- Breaden Belcher
- Femi Fletcher
- Bridget Broihahn
Despite all of these points, David Wesner argues that the City could not have created and posted meeting minutes, and should be held exempt from the Open Meetings Act requirements to maintain these records, based on inadequate staffing.
David Wesner was appointed as City Attorney by the Mayor and the City Council on June 28, 2021. Jaya Kolisety, Chaundra Bishop, Christopher Evans, James Quisenberry, Maryalice Wu, and Shirese Hursey voted in favor of the Wesner appointment. Only Grace Wilken voted against the appointment.