Raw Milk Monday...Open Meeting Act of Illinois, Who Knew?



In this process of educating myself about law making in Illinois while trying to educate the Illinois Department of Public Health about the need to leave current raw milk rules alone and as they are, I learned something about public meetings.

It appears that in black and white there exists some very specific rules about meetings of those in public offices, such as IDPH. (Thank you Pete and Marc for making me aware of this.)

The specific act is HERE. After reading it and reading it again, I will admit how surprised I was at how IDPH had not followed it's own State Rules.

Specifically, when I was contacted By Steve Divencenzo to serve on the Raw Milk Steering Committee, I asked for the minutes of the last two meetings so I could get up to speed. He told me there were no minutes and that the proposed draft of new raw milk rules served as the minutes.


Seems the Open Meetings Act of Illinois says something different.
  5 ILCS 120/2.06) (from Ch. 102, par. 42.06)
    Sec. 2.06. Minutes; right to speak.
    (a) All public bodies shall keep written minutes of all their meetings, whether open or closed, and a verbatim record of all their closed meetings in the form of an audio or video recording. Minutes shall include, but need not be limited to:
        (1) the date, time and place of the meeting;
        (2) the members of the public body recorded as either

present or absent and whether the members were physically present or present by means of video or audio conference; and

(3) a summary of discussion on all matters proposed,

deliberated, or decided, and a record of any votes taken     Why is this important? Well, for a few reasons. Minutes (if they were taken as required) would identify which new proposed rules came from the mouths of IDPH and would then identify which member of the committee suggested the other proposed raw milk rules. It would also identify  any discussion that followed.      It was also fascinating to see the section about the posting Meetings on the IDPH website which had not been done prior to the last mtg on Feb 22. Which explains why only one raw milk farmer, not a member of the original raw milk committee, was able to find out about the meeting and call in to participate. It took him several phone calls to find out.   In addition I discovered that IDPH was to have posted these mtgs a full ten days before their occurrence. And now IDPH is becoming secretive about the May 1st mtg. In the last Raw Milk Steering Committee mtg we were told the May 1st mtg would be In Bloomington, Il  at The IAA building on Towanda Avenue.   Last week Molly Lamb sent me an email stating the May 1st mtg time and place was not yet "finalized" Obviously, they are intending to wait until the very last minute before they announce specifics. But, no worries. Today I sent a snail mail to Ms Lamb and her supervisors requesting copies of the minutes of all THREE meetings and reminding her that according to the law the May 1 mtg had to be posted on their IDPH web site by April 21.   I am not the first in our group to do this, I am in fact following THEIR lead, power in numbers we believe.   And now a small bit of good news. In the last email I got from Molly Lamb she told me that the 100 gallon monthly sales limit of raw milk  might be rescinded. Not sure how she knows that or can make that statement since the actual Raw Milk Steering Committee hasn't met since Feb . 22  but that's OK. It means someone, somewhere in the IDPH castle is listening to the noise of the serfs.