Page 18 - June2020 FOP Magazine

Illinois Supreme Court caves on file destruction case
On June 11, the Illinois Supreme Court rendered its decision concluding that the record destruc- tion provision in Section 8.4 is of the FOP contract unenforceable because it violates public policy.
The case arose from two grievances filed by the Lodge in 2011 and 2012, challenging the City’s failure to destroy records consis- tent with Section 8.4 of the collective bar- gaining agreement. The Lodge took both
grievances to arbitration. In 2016, Arbitrator Roumell
ruled in favor of the Lodge, finding that the City violat-
ed Section 8.4 and ordered the parties to bargain over a method to identify documents that should be destroyed con- sistent with Section 8.4.
The City subsequently filed a petition to vacate the arbitra- tor’s award in the Circuit Court of Cook County, and the Lodge filed a petition to enforce the Award. The circuit court found the award to be unenforceable because it violated a “public policy” requiring the preservation of governmental records.
The Lodge appealed the circuit court’s decision to the Illi- nois Appellate Court, which affirmed the decision of the cir- cuit court. The Lodge then filed a petition for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, which the Illinois Supreme Court granted.
As mentioned in an earlier article, only a small percentage of such requests are allowed; roughly between 2 and 4 percent are heard by the Illinois Supreme Court at all.
After the parties submitted briefs, on March 17 the Supreme Court heard oral arguments. The questions by the judg- es suggested that they were more open to the Lodge’s position than the circuit court or the appellate court had been. Clearly, the justices’ questions indicated that they understood the magnitude of the underlying issues. Nevertheless, in the decision issued on June 11, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 1 in favor of the City’s position. The Supreme Court found that the Illinois Lo- cal Records Act and the Illinois State Records Act established a well-defined, dominant public policy requiring the retention of public records. Accordingly, the court explained that the arbitration award could not be enforced consistent with that public policy. The court specifically faulted the award because it did not provide for compliance with the provision of the Lo- cal Records Act giving deference to determinations made by
the Local Records Commission. Thus, the court concluded:
Without allowing the City to comply with state law, Sec- tion 8.4 clearly contravenes a well-defined statutory declaration of public policy and is simply incompatible
PAT FIORETTO
18 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JULY 2020