planning & development
Prepared Remarks Delivered to the
La Grange Board of Trustees
at a Special Meeting held April 21, 2008
Thom Rae
Publisher, everythinglagrange.com
My name is Thom Rae. I am not a resident of La Grange; I reside next door in Brookfield. But I do have interests in La Grange pertaining to my livelihood.
I am the publisher of an Internet website called everythinglagrange.com, in which I have for the past year and a half covered news and issues about La Grange, including those involving this Village Board.
I also am employed part-time at a downtown commercial establishment.
But I stand here before you now simply as a citizen of this state who has concerns about a part of the process you propose to employ tonight in working through your agenda, and as one who therefore has every right and authority under Illinois law to question your intent and conduct.
Specifically, my concerns regard that portion of the agenda identified as “a closed session for the purpose of discussing the purchase, sale or lease of real property.”
While I have some specific reasons for questioning the need and appropriateness of tonight's closed session, which I will address in a moment, I thought it might be instructive, both for members of the Board, as well as those watching tonight's proceedings—both here in the auditorium and via television at home—to first briefly review the laws related to the purpose and conduct of closed sessions.
You might, therefore, consider this one of those “teaching moments” that you as a Board have made an effort of late to incorporate into your proceedings—an effort for which I, and I am sure many others, applaud you.
Closed sessions of public bodies in Illinois, of which this Board is one, are exceptions to the rules regarding conduct of public business.
In an ideal world, public business would be conducted in a fully open and transparent process. The Illinois law known as the “Open Meetings Act” clearly acknowledges this, stating...
"[i]t is the public policy of this State that public bodies exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business and that the people have a right to be informed as to the conduct of their business. In order that the people shall be informed, the General Assembly finds and declares that it is the intent of this Act to ensure that the actions of public bodies be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.”
However, that same law also allows that there are times when the public's right to know may conflict with rights held by others. Or when the public actually benefits from having deliberations on its behalf conducted in a private manner.
An example of the first type of exception would be the privacy rights of an individual Village employee when the Board is discussing compensation or disciplinary matters.
An example of the second type would be when the Board is negotiating a deal on the public's behalf for the acquisition or sale of a piece of real property. This type of activity would be covered by the description given as the reason for tonight's closed session.
Usually, this sort of closed meeting is invoked because it serves the public interest that it not be generally known that a public body has its eyes on acquiring a specific parcel, or type of parcel, because that sort of general knowledge might cause other parties to intercede in a way that could prove costly to the public.
So the reason you have given for invoking a closed session of the Board is entirely legal and appropriate if in fact you are considering the purchase, sale or lease of real property. And real property, I should point out, having at one time held a real estate license in another state, is legally defined as the ground on which a building sits, not the building itself. A building that sits on real property is legally known as an improvement.
My concern about tonight's closed session is based on information I legally obtained from sources in this community that indicate that the subject property you intend to discuss—out of public view—is the La Grange Theatre.
Now, I am under no requirement to divulge my sources, nor will I do so should you request or demand it, but you can rest assured that I would not be standing here tonight if I did not believe the information I was given was accurate.
That the Village has expressed an interest in taking some sort of action to ensure the future viability of the La Grange Theatre is no secret. It is, in fact, a matter of public record.
Last October, the owners of the theatre, Jon Rot and David Rizner, approached this Board and asked for your help in ensuring the future of their operation.
The theater is a landmark in this community, dating back to 1925. Operating today as a multi-screen, second-run movie house, it offers a source for entertainment unique among communities in the western Cook County suburbs, and it therefore draws a significant number of patrons who, while visiting the downtown, also are likely spend their money at other businesses.
So maintaining, and even enhancing and expanding the theater's operation, as Mssrs. Rot and Rizner have said they would like to do, is clearly in the public interest.
But as they said last fall, accomplishing that will require an infusion of capital beyond which they can justify spending by themselves. The building is quite old and, despite the numerous upgrades the pair already has made in terms of seating, projectors and what not, there remain structural and engineering deficiencies that would require as much as $3.5 million to remedy.
At a special public workshop, conducted by the Board last November, some of these deficiencies were explored in detail and the Board discussed in a preliminary fashion some of the ways it might be able to help.
Among the actions I recall being considered was a loan or grant of some sort, similar albeit much larger than the loans the Village offers to downtown businesses wishing to upgrade their facades.
Also by my recollection, at no time was there any serious mention of the Village purchasing the theater property either outright, or becoming an owner in some partial fashion, or leasing the building and the ground under it for public use.
And the term “public use” deserves note here because, under the Open Meetings Act, the language of the exception makes clear that any real property discussed in closed session must be that which could be acquired for use by the public body.
So, if the Village is seriously considering purchasing or leasing the La Grange Theatre property for some public use, then a closed meeting is allowed. Although that revelation would certainly come as news to me and, I am sure, most of us watching the proceedings tonight.
Any other form of financial aid that the Board might deem to explore does not qualify for discussion in a closed session, a point I made to Village Manager Bob Pilipiszyn during a conversation I had with him on Friday afternoon.
Of course, he politely refused to confirm my assertion that the theater was the planned subject of tonight's discussion, but he also did not deny it. He simply said that he could not comment on closed sessions due to their proprietary nature.
Now, if I can digress for a moment, this is good time to point out that closed sessions of a public body are not as proprietary as one might believe. They are not even required by law.
Just because the subject of a Board discussion involves the purchase, sale or lease of real property, going into closed session is only an option available to the Board, not a necessity.
If in fact the La Grange Theatre is the subject matter of tonight's closed session, why does the Board feel a closed session is necessary?
The subject property and the Village's interest and proposed involvement in maintaining and enhancing it are public record. How is the public interest being served by going into closed session? And if a closed session is not of necessity in the public interest, then just whose interests are being served?
Obviously, any financial involvement the Village pursues here will require the owners of the theater to open their books. No surprise there. After all, they are asking the taxpaying public to consider investing as much as $3.5 million into their operation. And if the Village pursues a possible purchase or lease of the property, the cost could be substantially higher.
Doesn't the public then have a right to a transparent examination of exactly what it is they are being asked to buy into?
And is the Village really serious about purchasing the theater property? If not, then I would contend that there is no legal justification for a closed session.
I raised that point with Mr. Pilipiszyn in our conversation of last Friday and he responded, again without confirming or denying anything, that in any activity related to the theater and/or any rules regarding the conduct of closed sessions, the Village was relying on the counsel of its attorney, Mark Burkland, to help them navigate any potential “minefield,” as Mr. Pilipiszyn described it.
I don't know Mr. Burkland well but I assume he is giving you the best counsel of which he is capable. And I appreciate and applaud the fact that you are relying on legal counsel for direction.
In fact, before coming here tonight, I sought some legal counsel of my own, beginning with discussions with some local attorneys, which led me to discussions with more attorneys at the Citizens Advocacy Center in Elmhurst, and finally, this morning, to a discussion with Heather Kimmons.
Ms. Kimmons is an attorney on the staff of the Public Access Counselor in the Illinois Attorney General's office. At the time we spoke by phone, she was in her car, driving to an unnamed village in northern Illinois where tonight she will conduct a “training” seminar for a local public body. Training, she told me, is the first remedial action that the Attorney General's office employs when it finds that a public body has lost its way in that minefield of which Mr. Pilipiszyn spoke.
There are other remediations for violating the Open Meetings Act, she told me, up to and including civil and/or criminal prosecution. In short, it is against the law to abuse the Open Meetings Act.
At this point, you may thinking, “Gee, Thom, you seem to be getting a little heavy handed here in your finger wagging.” Well, I believe I have reason to do just that.
Let me recall an incident that also occurred last November when this very Board was planning another special workshop, this one intended to develop goals and objectives for the coming year. If those of you watching tonight heard about it all, it most likely was after the fact, because the Board never really promoted it. In fact, they went out of their way to keep the workshop, which was by law a public meeting, out of public view.
Bob Pilipiszyn admitted as much to me in a phone conversation, in which he stated that the workshop was not even listed on the calendar of the Village website. Only the barest legal requirements had been met in posting notice of this workshop.
In fact, the reason he had called me at all was to ask me, as publisher of my website, not to attend nor cover the workshop, and that he had asked the same favor of the Suburban Life and Doings newspapers. Now, he had to ask it as a favor because he had no other choice. The workshop did not meet the criteria for a closed meeting. It therefore had to be conducted as an open meeting under law.
But Bob explained that the Board really did not want the public in attendance. Why not? Because, he explained, the workshop was viewed as more of a corporate retreat where the president and trustees could kick back, drop their guard and have an open and freewheeling discussion among themselves about the Village, its needs and the issues it faced.
And he said it would give the trustees, especially the new ones, an opportunity to get to know one another better and do some team building. To give the meeting the feel of a corporate retreat, it was being held not in this room, but at the La Grange Country Club.
I told Bob I would get back to him in a couple days, and I did. I wrote a letter addressed to him, to President Asperger and to all the trustees, telling them just how wrong and arrogant I believed their plans to be. If any among them were not capable of having an honest and candid discussion about the Village's goals and issues in a public forum, I wrote, then maybe they should reconsider their preparedness for the rigors of public office.
But the workshop went on as planned. I was unable to attend the Friday night session, but I was there for the session on Saturday morning. I was treated cordially, and I didn't witness anything inappropriate. Is that only because I was there? Who knows?
It was that experience last November that set off alarm bells in my head when I learned about tonight's scheduled closed session and then was given reason to believe that it had to do with the La Grange Theatre.
Now, let me reiterate that a closed meeting for the purpose of discussing the purchase, sale or lease of real property is legitimate, even if it involves the La Grange Theatre. But the discussion cannot veer far from that rigid script.
You cannot use the guise of a discussion on a possible sale or lease as a penumbra for a freewheeling discussion on the various ways you might help the La Grange Theatre remain a vital community asset. That is a discussion that must take place in public. That is what Ms. Kimmons from the Attorney General's office told me this morning, for whatever you think that is worth.
And she also told me to contact her immediately if I ever have good reason to believe that a closed session is being used for anything other than what was intended under the law. And that invitation is open to everyone in this room and everyone watching at home. And even to those of you before me.
As I mentioned earlier, discussions held in closed session are not proprietary. Citing a 1991 opinion from the Illinois Attorney General...
“A public body cannot sanction one of its members for disclosing information or issues discussed in a closed meeting.”
The Attorney General noted that the possibility of such sanctions "would only serve as an obstacle to the effective enforcement of the Act, and a shield behind which opponents of open government could hide."
So if any of you find yourselves in a closed session that has gone off its intended tracks, you can feel free to tell all of us. More to the point, it is my prayer that you would, without hesitation.
This leads me to the conclusion of my remarks, in which, on the one hand, I want to remind you that as a Board your actions are being watched, and that even a closed session offers no protection should you, for any reason, determine that it is just more convenient or expedient or whatever to conduct the public's business out of public view, unless the law allows it. And those exceptions are few—there are about two dozen of them—and they are rigidly proscribed.
And should you choose to abuse the trust that has that the public has granted you, then know that there are those of us watching who also are prepared to take action via the legal remedies available to us.
If you doubt that, please take note of the fact that the Park District of La Grange is still in court where their actions involving the proposed sale of a portion of Gordon Park—actions debated and administered in closed session—are undergoing scrutiny.
On the other hand, it is my fervent hope that each of you as individuals will make every effort in the course your exercises as a Board to make such action unnecessary.
For guidance in that effort, let me conclude with a lesson drawn from Mayberry, that town of television-sitcom lore often invoked by President Asperger.
Yes, it can be said that La Grange at its best reminds us of a place like Mayberry, a well tended town with a strong sense of community and a tendency towards good neighborliness.
But let's also remember the greater lesson of Mayberry. How in each episode, it strives to teach us sound values and, consequently, good behavior.
The Mayberry we see on TV is not a perfect visage. Its inhabitants are human, just as we are, and their foibles are often comic, providing grist for our amusement. But invariably, whatever conflicts have arisen, whatever rock-and-a-hard-place choices confront the characters, at the close of each show there is both resolution and a moment of reflection, presented often in a conversation between Sheriff Andy and his son, Opie.
While it may sound corny, I like to think of those conversations as “What would Andy do?” moments. But whatever he does, we as viewers often find ourselves agreeing with him.
So tonight, or whenever you find yourself wondering which way to vote on a thorny issue, or whether or not it serves the public interest to go into closed session, you may just ask yourself, “What would Andy do?” Chances are you will then do the right thing.