It’s not just DeKalb’s mayor who’s having trouble with the Open Meetings Act lately. The Edgar County Watchdogs report that the president of the Village of Wheeling recently used police officers to stop a citizen who wanted to address public comments to one particular public official instead of the whole board.
The focus of this Watchdogs’ report was the advice that the law firm Klein, Thorpe and Jenkins* have given Wheeling — and other public bodies in Illinois — when it comes to local government making rules about public comments at public meetings.
The Open Meetings Act says this about the public’s right to speak:
Any person shall be permitted an opportunity to address public officials under the rules established and recorded by the public body.
It’s a newer amendment to the Open Meetings Act, and yeah, it’s kind of vague. But that’s okay. The granting of a right to speak by any level of government automatically puts us under First Amendment coverage since nobody’s allowed to supersede the Constitution. Continue reading Freedom of Speech starts at home