Burr Ridge Mayor Defends Openness Record

BURR RIDGE, IL – Burr Ridge's mayor said Monday that the village usually wins when people file complaints involving the state's sunshine laws.

At Monday's Village Board meeting, Mayor Gary Grasso said 15 complaints related to the Freedom of Information and Open Meetings acts have been filed against the village with the attorney general since he took office five years ago. The village has prevailed in all of them but one, he said.

That one came last week. The attorney general found the board violated its procedures in allowing one of its members, Joe Snyder, to take part in meetings remotely.

Grasso did not mention Snyder by name. As of last month, the trustee had missed 40 percent of meetings and attended 27 percent remotely over the last year. He showed up Monday.

In his comments, Grasso dismissed the complaint, filed by resident Patricia Davis, as "form over substance," calling the village's issue a "simple technicality." At the same time, he said he respected the attorney general's opinions.

The mayor criticized Davis, but did not utter her name. She has filed public records requests in recent years, which the mayor said have taken up the village's time and money.

"If she was really interested, she would have asked us rather than get her name in the paper," Grasso said.

In an email to Patch, Davis said she asks the village questions, but gets no answers.

"When Village staff doesn't answer a citizen's questions, when they completely ignore a citizen's emails, there is no other recourse than to file a (Freedom of Information Act) request," Davis said. "I don't expect immediate answers; no one should. But it shouldn't take a Village staffer longer than, say, a week to answer a question. Even repeatedly asking the same question to the same staff member yields no answers."

Davis said the mayor was incorrect that the village has prevailed in all but the recent complaint.

In 2023, she said the attorney general found that the village should have released information about an Economic Development Committee meeting in response to her request. She said the village withheld information from her that it gave Patch.