Maria Pappas, Cook County Treasurer
Last week, The Observer published a press release from Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas’ office regarding a failure by Barrington Hills to comply with a request for financial information. Then this week, the Cook County Treasurer’s office copied The Observer on a rebuttal letter responding to a stinging letter penned by Village President Bob Abboud (see “Cook County Treasurer responds to Abboud’s complaint letter”). At that time we did not have a copy of the letter she was responding to.
The Observer obtained a copy of President Abboud’s May 18, 2012, letter to Maria Pappas earlier today from a subscriber, and that copy (1.2 MB) can be downloaded here.
We’ll leave it to readers to judge the merits of the various contentions presented in their respective letters, but we would be remiss if we did not point out an irrefutable violation of the Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA) by President Abboud in his letter. He closed his letter on page three using his personal business email address as a contact method for further communications with not only Treasurer Pappas, but everyone copied, including elected officials, members of the press, and residents of Barrington Hills.
OMA law requires elected officials and those employed by a government body to use their assigned governmental email address for any government related web-based communications. This is a safeguard which allows constituents, the news media or literally anyone who wishes the right to file FOIA requests for electronic correspondence since correspondences made by public officials via personal email addresses are not subject to FOIA law.
President Abboud and Bob Kosin, Director Of Administration, FOIA Officer
Given the plethora of OMA training and recertification that has occurred with our elected and appointed officials, an ignorance of the law plea by President Abboud is no excuse. The deeply concerning question is if he used his personal email address in this openly public correspondence, how many other Village related communications have occurred or are occurring under the OMA and FOIA radar by President Abboud?
We will never know until he begins to follow the laws as the rest of us have to, will we?
– The Observer
“Me thinks the lady doth do protest too much.” Just give Treasurer Pappas the information Abboud, or can you? Why the political grandstanding, is this going to be your manufactured issue for the next election?
@ponyup
The man fights with everyone and of course he is always right. The reason for the political grandstanding – to take the focus off the real issue.
I believe it, the last time I was on Oakdene Dr. in Barrington Hills, I was treated like a second class Citizen by a Resident and the Barrington Police Officer named Streig. My offense was being parked on the side of the road that serves more than 50 homes as the only access road. I was there on business, yet I was made to feel like Trayvon Martin by a resident of Oakdene. His grilling of me and wanting to know whether or not I ” belonged there” was really infuriating. The Policeman was even worse, I informed him that I was a US Citizen and a US Army Veteran. I do not believe there is anywhere in the USA that I do not belong. Barrington Hills gets a MOUTZA from me!