Rock Island Today

The Whiteside County Airport Board twice violated the Open Meetings Act (OMA) in 2016, according to an email from the Illinois attorney general that the Edgar County Watchdogs (ECW) posted on its website recently.

The board's attorney, Dave Murray, has also tendered his resignation effective June 30, the ECW reported.

The citizens oversight group applauded both developments and has posited that Murray should never have been in the position, since his responsibilities fall to the county state’s attorney.

"Dave Murray makes the third resignation from this airport board since we started looking at the airport," John Kraft wrote on Illinois Leaks, the ECW's website. "Earlier in April, board Chairman Stan Domack Jr. and board member John Zaeske resigned from the board."

The OMA violations occurred in August 2016 and were brought to bear via requests for review from Michael Dowell, the airport manager, according to the attorney general's office. In the first instance, the board held a closed discussion on its terms with Dowell’s company, M&M Aviation, as its lease with the airport was about to expire. The airport argued that the closed session was necessary because two businesses were contending for the new lease.

In the second violation, Dowell filed a request for review based on an improper notice of a different special meeting. Per the OMA, governmental bodies must provide notice of special meetings 48 hours in advance. Dowell contended that the board’s notice was not available for the full time nor state the time of the meeting.

Minutes from the board’s regular meeting in September 2016 show the board critical of Dowell’s requests for review. Murray noted that the board had discussed Dowell’s lack of trust and lack of appreciation, saying it was hard to understand why Dowell would “bite the hand that feeds him $96,000 a year,” the ECW posted.

In explaining its closed session for the first violation, the airport board cited two exceptions to the requirement that public business be conducted in the open: when a public body is discussing purchasing or leasing property for the public body’s use and when it is considering setting the price on a property owned by the body. 

Neither exception was accepted by the attorney general, which said the board was discussing the lease of public property, not property for public use, and the board did not actually discuss setting a price on the property. The board has been told to publicly release the recording of the meeting.  

Murray’s resignation comes following prolonged scrutiny from the ECW on the board’s statutory authority to hire outside counsel. In previous reports on the airport board, the ECW argued that the Whiteside County state’s attorney was responsible for representing the county airport and that the board had no authority to contract a private attorney.

According to a report from Sauk Valley News, Murray had worked for the Whiteside County Airport for half a century. At 81 years old, he is now retired from full-time work and spends seven months of the year in Florida. In his role with the airport, he earned $175 per hour, which totaled approximately $17,000 per year.