A Seventh Circuit Illinois court recently paused a litigation brought under Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act BIPA, pending the outcome of several other cases which could be dispositive. See Herron v. Gold Standard Baking
Having attended more public meetings than we can keep track of, there is one issue that keeps rearing its ugly head: what, if anything, can be revealed about closed session discussions?
The Open Meetings Act allows public bodies to go into closed session. Specifically, it states that they may go into closed session for numerous issues of which the statute spells out
(Illinois OMA statute) The very fact that public bodies may go into closed session tells us that it is not a requirement - it even says as much in Section 2 of the Act:
The exceptions authorize but do not require the holding of a closed meeting to discuss a subject included within an enumerated exception.
Brian Rich / Sun-Times file
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is demanding the state prison system take hundreds of inmates off his hands.
Dart says they’ve cost him more than $38 million though some of that has been covered by the federal government to house the inmates during the coronavirus pandemic, and that’s forced him to keep open a large cell building that he otherwise would have mothballed.
People convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison have remained in the Cook County Jail near 26th and California instead of being transferred to the Illinois Department of Corrections because the state was trying to keep COVID-19 from spreading in its prisons, Dart said.
Editorial: Time s up for secret deals at Navy Pier chicagotribune.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from chicagotribune.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.