McHenry County Blog

When I discovered that the McHenry County College Board had agreed to pay EquityOne Development Corporation $70,000 to conduct a study on the feasibility on a minor league baseball stadium, I immediately filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the report.

After all, the report was supposed to take eight weeks to complete and MCC President Walt Packard signed the contract on September 27 of last year.

Today I received a

CERTIFED MAIL
RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED

in which all of my requests (but one that was already public record) were denied.

Although a contractor said he would meet with local governmental officials and keep minutes, no document of such minutes are said to exist. Did Patrick Engineering fulfill the provisions of Attachment A, page 1 change order dated Nov. 28, 2006, signed by Ron Ally or not? Did whatever college official responsible for monitoring the contract fulfill his official responsibilities?

No draft petition and storm water management plan for MCC’s expansion was supplied. It was mentioned in a February 17, 2006 letter from Crystal Lake’s Senior Planner James Richter, but remains “TOP SECRET, HUSH-HUSH.”

So much for the public being able to see what McHenry County College might be doing to endanger the watershed of Crystal Lake, the lake.

And, then, there’s the EquityOne feasibility report.

That won’t be released, according to the certified letter from Howard A. Metz of the law firm of Robbins, Schwartz, Nicholas, Lifton & Taylor, Ltd., partially because it contains

Preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, memoranda and other records in which opinions are expressed, or policies or actions are formulated…

and

Trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person or business where the trade secrets or information are proprietary, privileged or confidential, or where disclosure of the trade secrets or information may cause competitive harm…

Now, the law firm only cited these two sections, not the specific language, but you get the idea.

Whatever is in the EquityOne report that we taxpayers paid $70,000 for is none of our business.

So, the public won’t be able to find out anything unless or until McHenry County College decides to reveal the information.

If this is what passes for governmental transparency in McHenry County, I’ll leave it to you to think of an appropriate form of government or location elsewhere in the world where such secrecy might be expected and tolerated.

Labels: Baseball Stadium, Freedom of Information Act, McHenry County College, Minor League Baseball, Ron Ally, Walt Packard