Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1942 [PAGE 278]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1941]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

275

T h e r e is, therefore, no question but that the University is an agency of the State of Illinois and that its trustees and officers are answerable to all general laws and restrictions which apply generally to officers of State agencies and departments which may handle and disburse public money and transact business for the State. "School boards generally must keep their records open for public inspection. T h a t is the general rule of most municipal corporations and other public agencies. " T h e Executive Committee is authorized by the statute to expend public moneys under certain conditions (paragraph 45) and by paragraph 43 of the Act the Committee is authorized, when the board of trustees is not in session to manage and control the University and do all acts and exercise all powers given by law to the trustees themselves except where they may be restricted by the board of trustees. Therefore, should it then be determined that the meetings of the board of trustees should be held public, the same reason would apply to the Executive Committee. "There seems to be but one case in this country exactly in point with reference to public meetings of common councils, that being the case of Acord v. Booth, 33 Utah 79; 93 Pac. 734, in which the court held that public officers transacting public business and expending public taxes must sit with open doors. "It is true that in Utah the statute provided that the council must sit with open doors, yet the court in the above case held that its committees on the whole must sit with open doors also and gave their reasons as follows: " 'Did the city council have the right to exclude the public, including the plaintiff, from its sessions while sitting in the capacity of what, in parliamentary law, is termed the "committee of the whole"? It was held that it did not have such right, the court saying: " W h e n the main body resolves itself into such committee, it does so for the purpose of escaping from the restraint that is placed upon its members under the rules governing the procedure of the main body. Debate and discussion are freer, and the secretary or clerk is relieved from recording all motions made and proceedings had, since all these are finally incorporated into the report which the presiding officer of the committee makes to the presiding officer of the main body. T h e report is addressed to the presiding officer of the main body, and is made to the same assembly and to the same members from whom it emanates T h e city council . . . . , while sitting as a committee of the whole, still was the city council and conducting public business, which, we think, the public, including the plaintiff, had a legal right to hear. T h e statute would be robbed of nearly all of its force if it were construed to mean that the sessions of the city council should be open only so long as it transacted its business under the strict rules applicable to legislative bodies, but when it relaxed those rules so as to make debate and discussion freer it could close the doors against the public T h e purpose (of the statute) was not that the public might know how the vote stood, but the purpose evidently was that the public might know what the councilmen thought about the matters in case they expressed an opinion upon them. Moreover, the public has the right to know just what public business is being considered, and by whom and to what extent it is discussed. These discussions and deliberations could thus all be taken up in committee of the whole, and the public be excluded from the very proceedings which the statute intended should be conducted with open doors." * " T h e tremendous public interest of the affairs of the State University is not only reflected by the liberal powers conferred upon the board of trustees by statute but is also reflected in the fact that in addition to all other incomes of the University there has been appropriated by the legislature bi-annually vast sums out of the public revenue of the State to the end that the education program, for which the University was created, might not be stinted or limited in its functions. F o r the biennium succeeding the 1939 session of the General Assembly of Illinois there was appropriated out of the public revenue of the State the gigantic sum of $17,831,536.00. [See note below.] This sum, together

NOTE.—The total amount appropriated by the General Assembly and approved by the Governor for the biennium 1939-1941 was $17,131,536. This included, from State tax revenues, $12,604,902; from Federal funds reappropriated to the University, $326,634; from University income, fees, receipts, and other non-tax sources, $4,200,000.—H.E.C.