After a 5-Month long expensive legal battle, the Village of Lisle has filed a "Motion to Voluntarily Dismiss" thier lawsuit against the IL Attorney General and a Lisle resident.
The Village of Lisle challenged Binding Opinion 16-007 issued by the Illinios Attorney General which determined that the Village had violated the IL Open Meetings Act on June 6, 2016 when it held a an illegal closed meeting to discuss citizen petitions and cancellation of the sale of bonds.
Over 900 Lisle citizens signed petitions seeking a ballot referendum on approval to refinance the Benedictine University Stadium Bonds.
Those involved with the petition circulation say the BU Stadium deal was a complete bust - costing Lisle $11 Million and will give the entire stadium to BU for $1 in 2029.
On March 13, 2017 the Village Board held a "Special" closed meeting and voted to end the legal battle and released an 8-minute audio recording of a "portion" of the 26-minute long discussion held by the Board at illegal closed June 6 meeting, withholding the recording of 18 minutes of the discussion.
Excerpts from Binding Opinion 16-007:
- "The MAJORITY of the closed session discussion concerned the possibility that litigation would be filed by the opponents of the bond sale."
- "A very brief portion of the closed session discussion concerned a seperate earlier Request for Review pending before the Public Access Councelor. Because Ms. Bartelli expressed concern only with regard to the Board's reliance on the earlier statements of the group of citizens who circulated petitions for a backdoor referendum, we have limited this office's review to the specific issue set out in Ms. Bartelli's June 14, 2016 correspondence."
- "In accordance with the findings of fact and conclusions of law, the Board is directed to remedy this violation by disclosing to Ms. Bartelli and making publiclly availalble that portion of the closed session verbatim recoding of its June 6, 2016 meeting related to the bond sale."
If the illegal closed meeting was 26-minutes long and a "majority" of the discussion concerned the bond sale, why is the released audio recording only 8-minutes long?
Why is the Village Board withholding from the public the audio recording of the remaining 18 minutes?
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