We dig into public meetings and government transparency, what’s required by law and what an actual commitment to open government would look like.
By India Daniels
What do “sunshine” laws look like in Chicago?
A previous version of this article ran in the Documenters Newswire newsletter. Subscribe to get explainers and updates on local government happenings delivered to your inbox each week.
As we relaunch the Documenters Newswire newsletter we’re setting the tone with a crash course about “open government”—what it is, how it shapes civic life and where it falls short.
Open government is the concept that we all have a right to know what our elected officials are doing on our behalf, and, more specifically, how our tax dollars are being spent. At City Bureau, we talk a lot about how public meetings are civic spaces where anyone can have their voice heard.
After the Great Depression hit in 1929, new programs meant to alleviate poverty and encourage economic growth quickly swelled the size of government. Americans wanted the receipts, literally—and federal, state and local laws were passed to ensure open government in two key ways:
Open or public meetings, a standing invitation for people to listen in on and speak to government decision-making
Freedom of information, the right for people to access government records
In this article we’re focusing on open meetings. Despite that “standing invitation,” attending an open meeting may not be your first choice when you think about meaningful civic involvement. You might not know you’re allowed to attend these meetings, much less when and where the meetings happen, and let’s be honest, they can be dry and hard to follow.
That’s where the Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA) comes in. The OMA is a state law that promotes transparency in government decision-making, policies and spending by requiring that government bodies hold meetings that are open to the public.
Government bodies or agencies come in many shapes and sizes, and they each have groups of people that have the power to make high-level decisions, whether that group calls itself a board, commission, council or committee.
As a member of the public, you can expect your government bodies to regularly hold open meetings. They must also:
Give at least 48 hours public notice before they plan to meet and share an agenda listing what they’ll discuss
Reach quorum, a minimum number of members who need to be present in order for a vote to count—usually half the total number of members, plus one. (On the flip side, if enough members run into each other in the hallway and start chatting, that counts as a meeting and could be a violation of the OMA.)
Set aside time for public comment, when anybody can share concerns with the group (some with more flourish than others)
The main exception is that if the group needs to address a sensitive or confidential issue like hiring, firing, financial investments or lawsuits, members can enter a “closed” or “executive” session away from the public eye. If you wait it out though, you might learn what they discussed; they must return to open session in order to make any official decisions or adjourn the meeting.
Every state in the U.S. has some form of OMA, which are also referred to as “sunshine laws.” But every government agency goes about it differently—some agencies go out of their way to make their meetings as accessible as possible and some regularly violate the law (whether it’s on purpose or by accident is up for interpretation). Other groups do the bare minimum. For example, if the government agency puts a Post-It about an upcoming meeting date on a bulletin board in their waiting room, they have technically fulfilled the OMA’s requirement to notify—but would you call that an “open meeting,” really?
City Bureau released an Open Gov Report Card in 2019, which graded 100+ local government agencies on whether they met basic requirements in the OMA, plus a handful of our own “openness” measures, mostly related to basic tech changes since the 1950s when the law was originally written—like having a website and posting meeting recordings. The results were not pretty: Chicago area government bodies received a “D-” average grade.
Public meetings in the age of COVID-19
Prior to COVID, most of the local open meetings covered by Chicago Documenters were held in person, and only a handful were live-streamed. At the start of the COVID lockdown, government bodies canceled their meetings in waves. When meetings began to resume in mid-2020, much-overdue technological upgrades like livestreaming allowed anybody to watch or give public comment from home. For people who never had the time or ability to attend a meeting in person before, this was a game changer (as long as they had internet, of course).
While the OMA has gotten some tweaks over the past couple years, there’s currently no clear guidance on whether open meetings should be remote, in-person or both (also called hybrid). Some government agencies have reverted to in-person-only, and at a recent Chicago Housing Trust meeting, Documenter Zoe Pharo reported that though members wanted to continue to meet remotely, attorney Peter Friedman advised them not to. “Sheer convenience” wasn’t enough of a reason to continue meeting remotely, he said.
But whose convenience is being prioritized? We asked Matt Topic, a lawyer who specializes in government transparency issues, for his take. “Having gone through two years of Zoom meetings,” he says, “I think it’s sort of an interesting question: Is it sufficiently convenient for the public to have [an open meeting] only be in person?”
We counted, and at least 10 Chicago-area open meetings each month are currently in-person only. City Bureau sent requests for comment to several of those agencies. The response:
A spokesperson for the Chicago Board of Health, which coordinates the city’s COVID-19 response, said that they were meeting in a conference room that can fit up to 25 people, but were actively considering a hybrid format. On Aug. 17, its meeting had in-person and remote access options.
The clerk of the Illinois Pollution Control Board, which enforces rules against industrial waste dumping and other environmental hazards, stated that though it holds meetings in Chicago and Springfield connected via videoconference, it will not share the link with the public.
The Illinois State Board of Elections, which also meets with locations in Chicago and Springfield connected by videoconference, allows board members to join remotely but has stopped sharing the link with the public. The board liaison did not reply to multiple requests for comment by press time.
Topic says there’s no reason open meetings shouldn’t have in-person and remote access options, but he thinks it’s unlikely that the Illinois General Assembly would change the OMA to require a hybrid format. The press office of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Public Access Counselor, which trains government agencies on open meeting requirements, did not respond to requests for comment by press time (August 19, 2022).
Truly open access to public meetings
If sunshine is a metaphor for government transparency, the Open Meetings Act (OMA) acts as a ray of sunlight amidst cloudy conditions. To us, true accessibility would be more like a weather forecast — where people have the information they need to plan ahead and engage with the issues.
So what would go into that weather forecast? We have some ideas.
Documenters partnered with disability rights organization Chicago ADAPT to create a resource guide for hosting more accessible open meetings. In addition to listing legal requirements, we offer recommendations that get at the “spirit of the law,” because it should be a whole lot easier for members of the public to attend, follow along and participate in open meetings.
Accessible public meetings — or a weather forecast, if you’re following the metaphor — aren’t ends in themselves, but they shape who can show up and in what capacity.
When people who use wheelchairs, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people for whom English is a second language and people who aren’t fully versed in the technical language of bureaucracy have true access to their government, the clouds clear and the sun, well, shines.
We’re calling this guide “Our Right to Know.” You can check it out below, or scroll down and click on the button to download a PDF version.
A huge thank you to Mike Tish, Chicago ADAPT, Nalani Saito, Chicago Documenters, designer Leanna Seymour, and fact-checker Olivia Stovicek for their contributions to this project.