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[David Lockmiller]

Work of the Committee That Identified 41 Public Monuments for Possible Removal Remains Opaque.

Better Government Association (Illinois’ Non-Partisan Full-Service Watchdog)
By David Jackson, March 2, 2021

Despite being considered one of the 19th century’s greatest masterpieces of public art, Lincoln Park’s “Standing Lincoln” is on a list of 41 monuments identified as potentially problematic by the Chicago Monuments Project.

Amid protests this summer over police brutality and civil rights, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in the middle of the night removed statues of Christopher Columbus that had become a focal point of the demonstrations.

Lightfoot also formed a committee to conduct a thorough review to assess if other public art should be removed or changed and promised the newly formed Monuments Project Advisory Committee would begin “an inclusive and democratic public dialogue” about the future of Chicago’s internationally known public art collection.

But during its first six months of work, the committee’s deliberations were kept secret. In fact, the mayor’s monuments committee was designed that way.
“What’s said here, stays here,” is a message city officials delivered to the committee members at their Oct. 14 meeting, according to a slim, 24-page packet of committee agendas and minutes records City Hall released recently to the Better Government Association.

The committee is tasked with identifying any public monuments linked to white supremacy and injustice that “warrant attention” and could be removed. It ultimately flagged 41 problematic artworks, including statues of Columbus as well as Presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley.

But despite Lightfoot’s transparency pledge, there was no public notice of the committee’s six meetings, no record which 30 committee members attended or any details about what they recommended during roughly 12 hours of online deliberations.

The public had no opportunity to observe or offer any input at the private meetings — none of which were recorded in audio or video form, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Communications Director Christine Carrino said.

“The Chicago Monuments Project advisory committee is not a ‘public body’ and therefore the [Open Meetings] Act’s requirements do not apply to it,” Carrino told the BGA in a statement, explaining the city’s refusal to release committee recommendations and reports, attendance rosters and any recordings of its first six meetings.

Records provided by the city in response to the BGA’s request suggest the list of 41 problematic monuments was provided by Lightfoot administration officials — and not generated by the artists and cultural figures on the advisory committee. “From a basic list of approximately 500 outdoor objects, we’ve identified over 40,” city administrators told committee members at their second Zoom meeting on Oct. 1.

The staff assessment then went to the three committee co-chairs: cultural affairs commissioner Mark Kelly, Landmarks Illinois CEO Bonnie McDonald and museum curator Jennifer Scott.

After that, the list of problematic monuments went to the entire advisory committee, which was asked “to workshop” the examples, Carrino said.

From there, “adjustments were made and additional artworks were added based on staff and committee input before the information was made available to the public,” Carrino said.

A Lightfoot press release and the committee minutes state the committee members would make recommendations and produce a “Final Report” with “documentation of the process and [their] recommendations.”

But in its FOIA response to the BGA, City Hall said there was no such final report or documentation of recommendations.

Lightfoot formed her public monuments advisory committee as she was coming under fire for separate alleged violations of Illinois’ Open Meetings Act.

Lightfoot announced the Monuments Project Advisory Committee as “a formal process to assess the monuments, memorials, and murals across Chicago’s communities, and develop a framework for a public dialogue to determine how we elevate our city’s history and diversity.”

Illinois’ Open Meetings Act guarantees citizen access to “all meetings at which any business of public body is discussed or acted upon in any way,” except under limited and specific circumstances.

Under the act, a “meeting” can include “any gathering, whether in person or by video or audio conference, telephone call, electronic means (such as, without limitation, electronic mail, electronic chat, and instant messaging), or other means of contemporaneous interactive communication.”

A 1997 Illinois Appellate Court opinion known as Board of Regents v. Reynard ruled that committees created to advise a government body are considered a public body for purposes of the Open Meetings Act.