31 years of minutes missing in Hoffman Estates

It could have happened on a dark and stormy night, with a shadowy figure breaking into the vault.

It could have been a janitor carelessly tossing paper into the trash.

Whatever the case, the Hoffman Estates village board executive session minutes from 1959 to 1990 have vanished without a trace.

Mayor William McLeod told the village board this week that the minutes were discovered missing last year, when some staff members found a signed note left by former Village Clerk Virginia Hayter dated May 25, 2007.

The note stated the minutes were lost in the 1991 move to the current village hall on Hassell Road.

"This was my first knowledge of this," McLeod said.

Village staff members were attempting to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act request when the minutes were discovered missing, McLeod said. He said he wants the public to be aware they're gone.

Village officials searched unsuccessfully for the minutes, McLeod said, before he made Monday's announcement. There are no leads.

Local officials must review closed-session minutes twice a year to deem if any should be released to the public. There are 23 topics, spanning from litigation to personnel, that can be legally discussed in private.

Hayter, now retired and living in California, said in an e-mail exchange Wednesday that staff members may have innocently thrown the files away before she became clerk in 1989, while then-clerk Helen Wozniak was ill and being treated at the Mayo Clinic.

Hayter stressed she never destroyed any records, and when she inventoried the last five years of her term, 2002-2007, all records were intact.

She questioned the timing of McLeod's announcement.

"Since from the time I left, the insinuations have been that I did not do anything right," she wrote.

Legislators have repeatedly amended the Illinois Open Meeting Act over the years, including in 2005 when municipalities were first required to keep audio recordings of closed sessions to supplement minutes.

The Illinois Press Association, the newspaper lobby group of which the Daily Herald is a part, has long advocated the recording of meeting minutes.

The press association's Beth Bennett said the loss of Hoffman Estates' minutes would be listed in the same category as "an act of God," such as a fire or natural disaster.

Bennett didn't find any reason to suspect the minutes were disposed of intentionally and said towns across Illinois aren't particularly skilled at bookkeeping.

"It's probably very scary to see how villages and townships across the state store their executive session minutes," Bennett said.

Hoffman Estates Village Attorney Art Janura said all board actions have to be made in open session. He also said that with remodeling going on at village hall, the staff has been instructed to be on the lookout for any missing documents and ensure nothing gets lost this time around.

Janura said the state's attorney's office has told him the village isn't liable for any wrongdoing. He stressed there was no reckless disregard for law by the village.

"If you have officials that are trying to evade the law, they wouldn't have taken down notes in the first place. … They wouldn't have even have bothered to write it down to begin with," Janura said.

Village historian Pat Barch said the loss of the minutes is just another indication how society fails to properly appreciate and preserve history. She wonders what history was lost, but said from now on computers should make things easier for the village.

"You don't know what's valuable until you discover that it's gone," Barch notes.