the next he's called his number one two zero three four three board of education springfield school district number one eighty six for the attorney general illinois gender number four counsel ready  have please the court and counsel my name is john schmidt i'm an assistant attorney general and i'm representing the attorney general in this case the attorney general issued ending opinions finding that the board of education violated section two e of the open needing sacked and those binding opinions under the open essentially have the force on a factor of final administrative decisions so the attorney general was acting as an administrative agency and she does that when she receives complain of almost violations and also freedom of information act violations in this case the attorney general interpreted section two we as requiring public bodies to inform those who are attending open meetings of the business being conducted the attorney general asked the scorer to affirm those binding opinions which are consistent with  purpose of keeping the public informed about public as n'est no section chewie contains two sentences it's a short provision the first sentence says no final action may be taken at a closed meeting sentence to says that final action shall be preceded by a public reciting all of the nature of the matter being considered and other information that will inform the public of the the term public recycle i believe there is some ambiguity in in that second sentence and the ambiguity would be as to when and where the public recites all must take place perhaps it could be considered ambiguous too in terms of the content of the resized all in if it is we would suggest that the interpretation should take into account all miss purpose as declared in section one of keeping the public informed as to public business in terms of  content the attorney general feels that the appellate court was wrong to say that section two easy only requires public bodies to recites the general nature of the proposed final action a language requires more it also requires information that will inform the public of the business being conducted and justice garman perhaps that's where the ambiguity as to content would come in what would inform the public of the business being conducted this particular case involved as separation agreement with the board of education's superintended and the attorney general in attempting to enforce this language said that at the very this particular case did the board ever withhold any information regarding the separation agreement it was posted on the website that is true that it was posted on the web site as part of the agenda and i'm going to say that was commendable for the board to do that we think the board actually went on the agenda requirements which are in section two point zero two c of o ma because the agenda requirement it only requires the general nature it only requires that the public body mention the general nature so we believe that's commendable but the attorney general interpreted that second site needs as requiring that that the as i'll discuss why first of all the key word i think is the phrases preceded by we think that can be interpreted as either before or immediately before and there is some language in the statute that we believe indicates that immediately before would be the proper interpretation  statute talks about informing the public of the business being conducted which we think suggests using being conducted instead of to be conducted suggests being conducted now or being conducted contemporaneously which suggests at the meeting itself that construction would also give a definite time and place where the public recycle must take place it would also be consistent with the statute as a whole because the statute does contain separate requirements for agendas and throughout the public recycle and there's a good  basically as the attorney general said in one of the opinions the agenda is designed more to inform the public give the public information that might enable it to decide whether to attend the meeting but at the meeting the public should be able to understand what's going on but justice thomas i would like to mention if you can round up disagreeing with us on that we would ass that the honor which basically said that the public resettle requirement only requires the public body to reciting the general nature we think that's clearly wrong under the plain language if you conclude that the agenda could satisfy we don't think that you should conclude that if you do we would ask the date you say that nonetheless say that that language in section forty two was wrong that the recycle must still cake contain information that would inform the public of the business being conducted and in this case if you considered the agenda what because it contained the whole separation agreement but we would ask that your rationale would be different than the appellate courts in that situation he was discussion and there was a vote and your argument here is that that discussion was insufficient to meet this public recital requirement are you asking th en every board meeting that the entirety of every contract be read aloud or something last and if something last where do we see in the statute what that is required definitely something why showrunner and the attorney general explicitly stated in my believe the second binding opinion that reading the entire contract certainly would not be required what the attorney general was doing was taking that for a is that the public public recycle must contain other information that will inform the public of the business being conducted and trying to apply it to this situation which involves a contract in which the  school district was discharging you know perhaps its most import fair show and saying the attorney general concluded to know to be informed of what was going on there at least some of the important terms this was certainly applied to every agenda item on every public and right i think it would your honor yeah so so is there do they should should we be in a position to say they must explain the amount of the contract and the details of the contract purpose of the contract and is that that we should be doing here i think by its nature this is something that's something that has to be done on a case by case basis i think that the court might be able to tell us straight things that would constitute key terms and i think amounts of money the amounts of public money being spent would be one thing and the attorney general did focus on the back as one of the paints that should have been disclosed here and we understand that this might not be an exact science for public eye to use in this case though none of the terms were disclosed and the attorney general saw that as a problem the public some of the embassy of have mentioned the possibility of substantial compliance and there is some case law indicating substantial compliance with oma and be sufficient perhaps in a case where a court legislature to decide whether they want to embrace the attorney general's opinions and and expand the well again we don't think this is an expansion of the statute  the attorney general believes this is interpreted and applying to this case the language that public bodies must provide other information that will inform the business the public of the business being conducted so we believe the language is there and that's going to require different things in different cases and we did suggest in our brief  you know of course it's not going to be an easy determination in some cases but i think that's true often in terms of applying the law and the law does often look at things through the eyes of a reasonable person and in this case what would a reasonable member of the public want to know what would it be important to tell them  should be had to be verbal and not written however i don't think the court needs to decide that because  e decide that in this case because there was no verbal or written discussion of the terms of the contract with the contract posted somewhere physical copy posted in the room i don't believe there was a physical copy posted in the room i would say under the binding opinion no it would not be sufficient however it would be if this court this court might disagree with that and we would certainly acknowledge that that would be of course that would be a good thing challenge here i thought it was more than just what the public recycle was prior to the march made i thought your your arguments go to what happened in a closed mean february when the preceding that the superintendent signed in one thousand page agreement in january that february fourth close meeting six of the seven council members signed the agreement but didn't date that's correct you are arguing that that was in effect a de facto final action having you know review this court's decision didn't create some gruesome appears to say that subsequent final action at an open meeting can sort of save the situation but i position is in this case the subsequent final action at the open meeting did not save the situation context of a case that involves a public contract that would require at least a summary and i emphasize the word summary as the attorney general  important terms of bad agreement we think that is necessary to inform the public of the business being conducted in cases that involve public  that afternoon justices on lauralee for cat representing district one eighty six zero zero may please the court in their reply brief the attorney general has argued although they have previously admitted that the standard of review today is de novo standard that is independent and not deferential in their reply brief they have argued that because the matter presented to the a g was one of the first impression that a well reasoned opinion would be entitled to some deference neither of these binding opinions are entitled to deference for the very reason that they were not in fact well reason in the first binding opinion the a g determined that the district brought by a latent section to eat in part because the public vote was not preceded by a sufficient public recital the a g found this despite the fact that they had never been requested to review this issue as required by section three point five b of the act and more importantly to our case they did it with out could by being the board an opportunity to respond to this issue as required by three point i see that binding opinion then did not comply with the statute giving the age of the authority to issue it so it cannot be considered to be a well reasoned opinion the circuit court we made of the case and so then of course we did have an opportunity to respond and so in the second opinion the binding opinion the a g found the same violation of section two easy but based on language she substituted for the language that was chosen by the legislature and it was certainly our contention and as the circuit court in  reason for that is there are no program later the agency added language to the statute requiring more of the bird the statute actually requires but didn't provide any  as to what that means what the statute actually requires is merely a public recessed with recitation of the nature of the matter being considered and other information that will inform the public of the business being conducted there is a difference between educating people and making sure they comprehend something and informing them the statute requires only that the public is inform d this court has many times protected those deliberative processes involved in close meetings and what the attorney general are you that the first hearing before the circuit court was now the bullet had to tell all the people why they voted the way they did and they had to read the agreement verbal you jim in response to the court's response to that the a g tempered that in the second banking opinion but they still require something that the legislature has not required and which frankly is unworkable the a g chives the board and the for their position that for their argument that her approach to this is unworkable saying that the mere inconvenience to the board is the price that's here to pay for keeping the public informed this is not a matter of mere inconvenience even i destroyed the size of district one eighty six had a consent to genda that way and thirty two pages long with ten entries on it all fine print all containing contracts now how does the borrower to know which of those contracts is so significant in the eyes of the attorney general that the key terms and which are the key terms my spam read in detail add a median so the public add that meeting will know what was occurring the consented that is available on the web site everyone can see how much is being spent the most larry of transactions often cost millions of dollars i ask the court to think of c p s and the vendor who supplies that district with food clearly that expenditure will be much much higher than the expenditure involved here when about the university of illinois and the vendor who supplies them with office equipment again an expenditure much much higher than involved here but a very very satisfy the public yes i do believe that the way that the item was introduced was sufficient we have to have a public presentation of the nature of the matter being considered this does not say a public presentation of the detailed of the exact matter being concern as there are including our details of the matter being considered but the nature the nature of this matter was that we could use by the president when she said you call follow i mention stay being we are on agenda nine point one i prove all of a resolution regarding a separation agreement that was the nature of the matter being concerted a vote on a separation agreement then he has two other information that will inform the public of the business being conducted the president said look she recommended that the board vote to approve the separation agreement that really