No Magical Shield For Lyons Township High Records

LA GRANGE, IL – Under state law, Lyons Township High School is unable to keep emails secret by simply copying its lawyer into messages.

A couple of years ago, though, some officials appeared to believe otherwise.

During a February 2023 closed meeting, then-board member Dawn Aubert said she wanted the board to receive a communication plan from its public relations firm. Such a plan would deal with a controversy over selling land in Willow Springs.

She asked whether the plan could still be "privileged" without the board's attorney, Ares Dalianis, being copied in on it. By privileged, she meant that the message could be kept secret even if someone filed a records request for it.

"Do you need to be in on it to be privileged?" she asked Dalianis.

"It helps the argument," said Dalianis, referring to legal battles over records.

Superintendent Brian Waterman said, "I would want him to be on it, to be honest. I would want Ares to weigh in as well."

Lyons Township High School is certainly not the first public body to operate under the assumption that an attorney's involvement in emails means they can be withheld from the public.

In 2003, an Illinois appeals court ruled that parts of documents with an attorney's advice can be blacked out before disclosing them. But it rejected arguments that a lawyer's mere involvement exempts such a record from the Freedom of Information Act.

"(T)he public body may not simply treat the words 'attorney-client privilege' or 'legal advice' as some talisman, the mere utterance of which magically casts a spell of secrecy over the documents at issue," the court stated.

It is unclear how Aubert could legally justify keeping a plan from a public relations firm secret from the public. She did not say during the meeting.

Aubert, who resigned abruptly as board president last April, couldn't be reached for comment.

In 2022 and early 2023, the board was holding closed meetings under the legal exception for setting the price of real estate (although the required legal language was missing from most of its meeting agendas).

Dalianis and the board interpreted the exception to mean that anything remotely connected to the real estate issue could be discussed behind closed doors.

However, the attorney general has ruled that the board violated the Open Meetings Act during closed sessions before and after nine open meetings. Because of that, the board voted to release the closed-session recordings.

Residents have criticized the board for the secrecy. For its part, the board recently blamed Dalianis of the Chicago-based law firm Franczek. The firm and board parted ways in August 2023.