Did County Board violate Open Meetings Act?

Last night the McHenry County Board met in its regularly-scheduled semi-monthly meeting. The Board meets one Tuesday evening during a month and one Tuesday morning during a month. Last night was the Tuesday evening meeting.

As with many public bodies the Board approves agenda items en masse, not individually. This obviously saves time; it also eliminates considerable public view of much of its business. Board members may "pull" (remove) an item from the consent agenda and considerate it separately.

Last night the Board was poised to consider a resolution prepared to "ask" Judge Graham for "Clarification of the Orders Appointing the special Prosecutor", meaning Henry Tonigan and the Lou Bianchi case. That Resolution was prepared by special counsel (by whom and at what cost? and approved by the Law & Justice Committee on February 7. (Are they just blowin' in the wind? If the Court "ordered" the Board to pay any bills without explanation, then the Board ought to go into court and argue against that order!)

One of the County Board members (I did not see or hear who made the request) asked for that item to be pulled. Because not all members speak into their microphones, I did not hear all the discussion on that, but at the time I thought it was being deferred to March 1.

After the regular business of the board was conducted, the chairman asked for a motion to go into executive session. While the role was being taken, the audience stood, prepared to leave and made a considerable amount of noise and disruption in the meeting room, which did not go unnoticed by the chairman.

Now here's the rub...

It appears to me that the McHenry County Board improperly entered Executive Session last night and later improperly acted on the item (the Resolution to Judge Graham) that was discussed in Executive Session.

Did the County Board commit up to five violations of the Illinois Open Meetings Act last night?

1. The agenda for the February 15, 2011, County Board meeting did not identify the topic to be discussed in Executive Session;
2. The agenda did not cite the specific 2(c) exemption in the OMA that applied and allowed the closure of the meeting.
3. The Board did not cite the specific exemption in its Motion to enter Executive Session.
4. The topic discussed (the Resolution to be sent to Judge Graham) is not one of the exemptions permitted under the Open Meetings Act allowing a meeting to be closed.
5. The agenda did not contain an item following the Executive Session for any action to be taken on an item discussed in Executive Session.

If any or all of these points are violations of the Open Meetings Act, the Board must address them and act so as to avoid such violations in the future.

The Resolution was on the agenda as Item 15-2 D. (1). The discussion should have occurred in open meeting. The decision during the open meeting to move it to closed session without advance public was improper.