The entire Urbana, Illinois City Council seems content simply ignoring numerous public records violations which have occurred over the past few years, and which continue to accumulate.
Check CU has published a number of articles detailing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) violations by the City of Urbana. One recent article shows how City Officials deployed illegal tactics to delay and deny records requests to a particular constituent, seemingly in an attempt to discriminate against this particular person. The article also includes links to many prior articles showing Urbana FOIA violations:
How Urbana Officials Abused One FOIA Requester for a Year
The article was published on January 19th, 2022 and Check CU sent it to the Urbana City Council on January 20th, and followed up again on January 22nd. None of the seven Council members issued any type of response, and no action has been taken to attempt to correct past and ongoing illegal activity by the Council’s appointed FOIA Officers and City Legal Department staff.
The requester mentioned in the article above, Urbana resident Tracy Chong, was subject to a year of FOIA delays and denials based on an illegally deployed scheme of declaring her a “recurrent requester”, even though she did not qualify as one (according to a determination from the Illinois Attorney General).
Despite the notice from the Attorney General, and the significant abuse employed by Urbana City Officials, Ms. Chong never received an explanation or apology from the City – no one attempted to contact her.
The Urbana City Council, having been made fully aware that one of their constituents had been repeatedly victimized by their appointed staff members, did not attempt to issue an explanation or apology to Ms. Chong. No Council member attempted to contact her.
Check CU is aware of the same types of illegal FOIA schemes ongoing, and new variants of unlawful records denials by the City of Urbana are constantly being unveiled.
Mayor Diane Marlin and Council members Maryalice Wu, Christopher Evans, Shirese Hursey, Jaya Kolisetty, Chaundra Bishop, Grace Wilken, and James Quisenberry, by all appearances, condone this unlawful conduct, and they have never failed to appoint City Officials who propagate the same type of conduct.