THE SCOFFLAW STATE

The Open Meetings Act is pretty simple when it comes to the Internet: Public bodies are required to post on their websites notice of upcoming meetings, agendas for meetings and minutes of meetings. How hard can that be? Pretty hard, apparently, if you run a school district, township or municipality. The Citizens Advocacy Center and Illinois Press Association recently surveyed counties, townships and school districts and found that only 73 percent of the public bodies chosen at random posted notices of upcoming meetings. Only 57 percent posted agendas and just 48 percent posted meeting minutes. Counties were the worst, with 39 percent posting notices of meetings and 33 percent posting agendas and minutes. School districts did the best, with 89 percent posting notices of meetings, 69 percent posting agendas and 62 percent posting minutes. The sampling excluded public bodies that don’t have websites, and there were a ton of those. Surveyors started out looking at 756 public bodies, but barely more than half – 385, to be precise – had websites. Talk about a digital divide.