Attorney general’s office looking into complaints against Deer Park

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First complaint

Updated: December 25, 2011 8:09AM

The Illinois Attorney General’s Office is investigating whether violations of the Open Meetings Act have recently occurred in Deer Park surrounding the termination of a police service contract and the subsequent approval of a new deal.

“We have received two requests for review pertaining to the village of Deer Park’s vote regarding the contract for police services,” Natalie Bauer, communication director for the Attorney General’s Office, confirmed in an email Nov. 14. “We are in the process of sending further inquiry letters to get more information from the village.”

On Monday, Deer Park resident Deborah Berry said she filed a complaint — in addition to two previous complaints submitted by others — on Friday regarding alleged open meetings violations she believes occurred at Deer Park’s Oct. 17 board meeting. In her complaint, she cited several concerns, including improper use of executive session, defective notice of executive session, scheduling of executive session, defective notice on village website and several other concerns.

It is unclear who filed the first complaint, as the Lake Zurich Courier received redacted copies of those documents.

One complaint, submitted to the Attorney General’s Office Nov. 2, alleges several violations including executive session being used incorrectly, improper public notice, inconsistent meeting records and public issues not being addressed to the community — held in private session with a lack of transparency.

“The village of Deer Park voted on (Oct. 17) to dismiss Kildeer police from servicing Deer Park and enter(ed) into a contract with Lake County sheriff,” the complaint states. “Only a few residents were present due to late posting of the meeting agenda — after midnight on (Oct. 17) — this was also not put in the noted space on their website.”

A second complaint, submitted Nov. 4 by former Trustee Maureen Pratscher, alleges similar violations.

“The trustees had no discussion before the votes were taken (at the Oct. 17 meeting), and my guess is that the board had thoroughly, and illegally, discussed the proposal from the Lake County Sheriff’s Department in executive session(s) and agreed that they would sign the contract,” Pratscher’s complaint states. “I can understand that discussion of breaking the contract with Kildeer might be legitimately discussed in closed session, even though the remedies for breach of contract were all administrative remedies, but the Lake County contract should have been discussed in open session.”

Bauer said the Attorney General’s Office is in the “very early stages of reaching out to gather more information to conduct a review.”

“I can’t speculate as to timing of our review, but we are actively looking into this,” she wrote in an email Nov. 15.

“The village of Deer Park does not believe it committed any violations,” Village Attorney Jim Bateman said Nov. 15.

Bateman planned to have a village response to the attorney general by early this week.

He said the important facts to note included that notice for the Oct. 17 Village Board meeting was physically posted at the Village Hall by Village Clerk Elizabeth Schroeder and sent to the media on Oct. 14.

Bateman said the notice and agenda were not posted to the website until Oct. 16 because Schroeder had problems with her computer. He added that Deer Park also isn’t required to post notices and agendas on its website because the village’s site is not maintained by a full-time employee.

Bateman maintains that all discussions held in executive sessions were discussions allowed by law and that both the termination of the former contract and the new contract were on the Oct. 17 meeting agenda and properly noticed.

Bateman also commented on concerns regarding a village press release, dated Oct. 17, that showed a post date to the Deer Park village website of Oct. 15. He explained that anything posted to the website must have a manually inputted post date.

Bateman cited clerical error as the reason the press release showed the Oct. 15 post date and said the release was not completed until Oct. 17, and therefore couldn’t have been posted Oct. 15.