The Illinois attorney general’s office is reviewing whether the Aurora library board violated the Open Meetings Act during discussions of budget cuts, a decrease in hours and layoffs at the library.
The review comes after a complaint filed with the attorney general by David L. Pierce, a former mayor of Aurora and a West Side resident.
A letter from the attorney general’s office sent to Pierce and the library board Tuesday says Pierce claims the board “took final action in closed session to approve service reductions, possibly on May 25, 2016.”
It goes on to say Pierce “also appears to question whether the subject of service reductions may have been improperly discussed in closed session under the exception for personnel matters.”
Pierce appeared before the board at its regular meeting this week and told board members that “not once was this issue discussed in an open session.”
“This board has never approved a reduction in service or cuts in staff,” Pierce said.
Library board President John Savage said this week he had not read the complaint yet but said the library’s legal counsel is “reviewing it.”
“We don’t believe it was a violation,” he said.
Pierce made his complaint after filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the minutes of all regular board meetings and committee meetings where budget cuts and layoffs were discussed.
He said he found no record in any of the minutes of discussion or a vote on the cuts Savage eventually announced at a City Council Committee of the Whole meeting in June.
At that meeting, Savage said the library was closing its East Side Express Center on Church Road and reducing hours at its West Side branch on Constitution Drive, next to Washington Middle School.
He also said 11 full-time and 10 part-time employees would be laid off.
The moves were going to save between $800,000 and $1 million, which would cover an estimated budget deficit of about $1 million at the end of the 2016 fiscal year.
Since that time, the board has held public meetings and fielded criticism and complaints about the moves.
The board will hold another meeting about the cuts in hours at 7 p.m. Monday at the West Branch, 233 S. Constitution Drive.
A Beacon-News review of the minutes Pierce received also found no mention of discussion of the cuts and layoffs, and the minutes did refer to a May 25 closed session taking place.
Savage said the budget situation was discussed many times at Finance Committee meetings over a period of time, but he was unsure just exactly what was discussed there. Pierce said he didn’t receive any Finance Committee minutes, which he said was covered in his FOIA request.
Pierce has claimed that the minutes indicate the library board discussed eliminating positions in closed session, which would not be covered under an Open Meetings Act exemption for personnel matters. He said some of the positions eliminated were vacant, so they were definitely not involved with any particular person.
“Vacant is not a person,” he said.
But Savage indicated this week that any discussion in closed session did involve positions that people were in and that some of them were unionized. He said the union employees’ situations could involve negotiable items and could be discussed in closed session.
“We’re going to evaluate and review what was discussed in the (closed) meeting,” he said. “We don’t think we had a violation.”
If the attorney general finds the board violated the Open Meetings Act, it would likely recommend remedial action — meaning the board would likely be made to go back and discuss the situation openly and retake any votes it took on service cuts, layoffs and budget cuts.
Section 3.5 (a) of the Open Meetings Act says that is the remedy for the review process by the attorney general’s office.
Section 4 of the Open Meetings Act says a person violating the act can be charged criminally, with a class C misdemeanor, but that would have to be done by the county state’s attorney’s office.
The board already has backtracked a bit on its original layoff plan. In a recent op-ed piece published in this newspaper, Savage indicated there are now only 11 jobs at issue and that “we have found new jobs for all five laid-off union employees, at their current pay rates.”
He has said at public meetings that reductions in hours could be adjusted or changed, too, as long as the library can meet its goal of reducing the budget by $1 million.
