The City of Urbana offered to pay $12,750 for plaintiff’s attorney’s fees in order to bring an end to an Open Meetings Act (OMA) lawsuit which was filed on November 20th, 2020. The lawsuit was filed after Mayor Diane Marlin resorted to muting numerous residents during the public input portion of City Council meetings because they made statements that the Mayor found disagreeable.
Shortly after the Council turned to virtual meeting settings held using the Zoom conferencing application in early 2020, Marlin soon discovered that silencing opinions which differed from her own was as simple as hitting the mute button on her computer.
On September 14th, 2020 Marlin explicitly stated that she would mute “negative comments” and later said that she would even mute people for expressing opinions. Marlin also changed the public input rules to convince the other City Council members to participate in this illegal conduct and then she followed through on her threats to mute people, many times.
This resulted in several CU residents filing complaints with the Illinois Attorney General, and the filing of a lawsuit by others around the same time.
Mayor Marlin’s appointed City Attorney, James Simon, vehemently defended the tactic of muting residents who dared disagree with the Mayor. On October 21st, 2020 Check CU published a detailed article describing how James Simon’s legal arguments were clearly wrong and correctly predicting that Urbana would lose any related lawsuits and Attorney General reviews. Check CU sent the same analysis to the Urbana City Council but none of them took any action.
Though City Attorney James Simon served as Marlin’s partner in crime in her attack upon free speech, Marlin hired an outside firm, Heyl Royster, to represent her in the OMA lawsuit.
Marlin denied all allegations in the OMA lawsuit, but shortly after, the Illinois Attorney General (IAG) issued a determination on two of the complaints received on the same issue. After reviewing OMA complaints filed by Urbana resident Tracy Chong, and Champaign resident Emily Klose, the IAG determined that Mayor Marlin and the City Council violated the Open Meetings Act multiple times. As predicted, the IAG dispensed with the nonsensical arguments of City Attorney James Simon.
After the IAG determination, Urbana quickly changed their public input rules and offered to pay all of the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees for the OMA lawsuit. The fees amounted to $12,750, and Urbana will also have spent taxpayer money for the services of Heyl Royster (that amount is not yet known).
Violations of the Illinois Open Meetings Act, of the type repeatedly committed by Mayor Diane Marlin, are crimes according to the statute. State’s Attorneys rarely prosecute public officials, even when their conduct is as flagrant as Diane Marlin’s. Litigation by private individuals is generally the only way to stop the type of abuse committed by Diane Marlin.
The settlement agreement can be seen below (click for full 7-page PDF):
