Urbana, Illinois City Administrator Carol Mitten showed flagrant contempt for the people’s right to observe public meetings at an off-site meeting of the Urbana City Council in February. Contempt quickly became criminal action when Mitten suggested to City Officials that they tamper with and disable audio equipment belonging to the press.
The February 22nd, 2022 meeting was not held at the City Building, but at the Stone Creek Church, on the southern edge of the City. The meeting was unquestionably an official meeting of the Urbana City Council – an agenda was posted and the meeting was called to order at 5:30pm.
Partway into the meeting, Mayor Diane Marlin, the City Council members, and a number of City Officials stopped using microphones to speak and instead began discussing public business while huddled at tables at the front of the room. This was not a closed session and it was not a recess – the meeting was purposefully structured to have portions that were not audible to the public. No one in the public seating section could hear any of the Council deliberations, nor could the deliberations be recorded at that distance.
When the Council deliberations became inaudible, Check CU reporter Christopher Hansen placed audio equipment on the tables at the front of the room and then returned to the public seating area, but City Council members and other City Officials began tampering with and disabling the equipment. When Hansen tried to restore the equipment, City Administrator Carol Mitten became aggravated.
Mitten said that using audio equipment to record the meeting was “an intrusion” – a confusing claim given that virtually every other meeting of the City Council is recorded verbatim, with multiple cameras and microphones in front of every City Council member and every City Official in the meeting.
Mitten: “Your desire to record their conversation is effectively stifling their conversation.”
The Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA) leaves no room for confusion on this matter. Section 2.05 says, “Subject to the provisions of Section 8-701 of the Code of Civil Procedure, any person may record the proceedings at meetings required to be open by this Act by tape, film or other means.”
Mitten argued that, during Zoom meetings, City Council members could have sidebars to speak to each other that were not subject to recording or public observation, but that claim is directly contradicted by the Open Meetings Act. The OMA requires public bodies to “allow any interested member of the public access to contemporaneously hear all discussion, testimony, and roll call votes”.
When Hansen said that he couldn’t hear what the City Council members were saying from the public seating area, Mitten became enraged and yelled, “Well, they’re saying god damn nothing right now!”
Mitten continued to ask Hansen to remove his audio equipment and then stated “What would you do if they shut it off?” At that prompt, Community Development Services Director Sheila Dodd immediately grabbed and disabled the audio receiver. Urbana Police Department Crime Analyst Melissa Hendrian, Human Rights and Equity Officer Carla Boyd, and Ward 2 Alderman Christopher Evans all sat at the same table and observed. Mitten then walked away.
Open Meetings Action violations are crimes in Illinois, though State’s Attorneys almost always refuse to prosecute them.
The entire interaction was captured by another meeting attendee who began recording with their cell phone when Urbana City Officials began disabling Hansen’s equipment:
This is not the first time that Mitten has created illegal barriers to public access at Council meetings. In October of 2020, Mitten pressured the Council into adopting a policy to censor public speech at meetings. As a result, members of the public were muted for mentioning the names of City officials, for issuing “negative” comments, or for expressing opinions.
Urbana was sued over the speech restrictions and multiple complaints were sent to the Illinois Attorney General. Mitten hired a law firm to deny all allegations, but the AG determined that Urbana had violated the OMA multiple times, and the City paid to settle the related lawsuit. Mitten never apologized to any of the victims or issued an explanation for why she thought censoring the public was acceptable or legal.
I think Carol Mitten needs to be sue in Civil Court for deprivation of rights, it is the right of the people to film/record their public official in the course of their duties. That has been ruled on by the Supreme Court of the United States many times. 1st Amendment Auditors all over the country have proven that time and again in publicly accessible places everyday. If you want to privacy get a job in the private sector, when we pay for your building and your wages, you work for the people, we have the right to inspect what goes on any time we feel the need to.