At the November 9^th, 2020 meeting of the Urbana City Council, a roll call vote was taken on “Ordinance No. 2020-11-063: An Ordinance Amending Ratification of Extension to Emergency Order No. 20-03”.  Council member Shirese Hursey was not present for the final vote, and did not cast a vote.

In the meeting video, Urbana City Clerk Phyllis Clark can be heard calling the role and saying, “Ms. Hursey, I know she is, but she’s gone.”  At the time, it was unclear if that statement had any meaning, but Check CU made a note of it.

The meeting minutes for the November 9^th meeting were not approved by the Council within the time required by the Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA).  Handling of meeting minutes is also a responsibility of the City Clerk.

In February of 2021, Check CU revisited the issue and found the meeting minutes had been reviewed and approved by the City Council and were available to the public.  Phyllis Clark had indeed invented a yes vote for Shirese Hursey, even though Hursey was not present for the vote.  The OMA requires all votes to be audible to the public.

Upon this discovery, Check CU submitted a request for review to the Illinois Attorney General (IAG), alleging a violation of the Open Meetings Act.  The request was submitted within 60 days of when the meeting minutes should have been made available to the public, but the IAG refused to investigate, arguing that the review should have been submitted within 60 days of the November 9^th meeting, or at least within 60 days of their approval.  The IAG erroneously construed the approval of minutes with the notion of public access to those minutes.

Such a posture by the IAG presents a terrible quandary to the public.  If a public body fails to post their meeting minutes in a timely matter, as required by the Open Meetings Act, then possible further violations of the OMA may not be discoverable until it is too late.

For an unscrupulous City Clerk, the loophole presents an excellent opportunity to engage in unlawful behavior and avoid oversight.  As noted in an article published by Check CU last week, Phyllis Clark failed to post meeting minutes for at least 14 meetings in the past 5 months, and Check CU issued a request for review to the IAG on that issue:

OMA Violation: Urbana Council Fails to Approve and Post Meeting Minutes

Since the IAG contacted Mayor Marlin and began investigating the more recent OMA complaint, Clark has posted the meeting minutes which she had previously been withholding.  Unfortunately, if Clark has doctored any of these minutes, it seems the IAG would refuse to perform a review on the grounds that the meetings occurred more than 60 days ago.