Sheriff's Merit Commission - Booo

This morning the McHenry County Sheriff's Department Merit Commission was to meet at 10:30AM in the Administration Building, 667 Ware Road, Woodstock. This Commission meets monthly in Regular Meetings, and these meetings appear on the County Government Calendar at http://co.mchenry.il.us

Occasionally, these Regular Meetings are canceled. About three days before a meeting the Agenda for the meeting is linked from the Calendar, so that interested parties can be informed of items and matters for discussion.

When the Agenda was posted last week, I placed this meeting on my own schedule and arranged to be in Woodstock. Should County residents and citizens have a reasonable expectation that a public Commission will meet as scheduled, once the Agenda appears?

Yes. I'll say that again. YES.

So, imagine my surprise when I arrived at the meeting room this morning and found it dark. Not a soul. Not a whisper. Not a telephone set up, in case they were going to meet telephonically. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

I hunted down the secretary for the Merit Commission in the County HR Department and learned that the meeting was canceled yesterday. (The January 2009 meeting was also canceled.) I could have checked the County Calendar this morning, but why should I? The meeting was on it; the Agenda was published.

Why was I there today?

I wanted to ask why they held an illegal meeting on October 21, 2008. I wanted to ask for assurance that the Commission would not attempt to hold a meeting illegally in the future.

More importantly, I wanted to ask if action taken at an illegally-held meeting was valid.

I wanted to ask if the Commissioners were aware of Judge McIntyre's December 17, 2008 Order, in which Judge McIntyre ruled against the Merit Commission.

I wanted to ask whether the Merit Commission would be ordering Sheriff Nygren to put Deputy Robert Schlenkert back on duty.

I'll write in more detail about these two topics in separate postings.

Will they meet in March?