A sibbling comment pointed out that deliberative process is widely abused and yes, absolutely it is. Almost sued the IL Senate a bunch of years back when they t

A sibbling comment pointed out that deliberative process is widely abused and yes, absolutely it is. Almost sued the IL Senate a bunch of years back when they tried to argue that email metadata was exempt under legislative deliberation. They conceded before it got there, but not before sending us a dense letter on some.. remarkably fancy.. paper telling that was basically them airing their grievances about having to give the metadata. If you haven't seen, alderfolk in Chicago are in a weird place as well. Since aldermanic offices aren't gov offices, records within those offices are exempt. It's gotten down to just a few in the past few years, but there were a tonnn of alderfolk whose official city email account were private domains, aol, msn, etc. The PAC has been very weak-handed in pushing against aldermanic office issues. Similar happened with the mayor's office trying to argue that a pro bono consultant's emails were exempt because they were sent from her private account. Sued and won on that, but that's all to say.. there's still work to do.