AG opinion: Joliet stadium agreement should be made public

Joliet may be releasing the nearly year-old naming rights agreement for city-owned DuPage Medical Group Field for the first time after the Illinois Attorney General's Office issued an opinion that it is a public document.

But interim City Manager Steve Jones said he first will have to get a copy of the agreement.

"When I get a copy, it will be made public," Jones said Monday.

Jones said there is no copy that he knows of at City Hall, and he has asked the Joliet Slammers to provide him with the agreement.

The city owns the stadium and had final authority over approving the agreement, which has been kept out of the public record since it was announced on May 21.

It was later approved by the City Council in July, although the council was not allowed to see it.

The Herald-News and at least one Joliet resident, John Sheridan, appealed to the attorney general after the city refused requests under the Freedom of Information Act to provide a copy of the agreement.

The agreement was announced under former interim City Manager Marty Shanahan, who contended it was a private matter between the Slammers, who negotiated the lease as the city's exclusive agent, and DuPage Medical Group.

Shanahan would not acknowledge whether he had even read the agreement.

Shanahan, who returned to his duties as city attorney after being removed as interim city manager in June, did not return calls for comment about the attorney general's opinion.

Jones became acting city manager and read the agreement under a non-disclosure agreement and reported on some details to the City Council, which approved it 5-3 in July 2019. Some council members said they could not OK an agreement they had not read.

"I told the Slammers after reading it, 'I think this is a public document,'" Jones said. "I'm not sure why this was not made public. I'm not surprised that the attorney general's opinion is what it was."

The city has never disclosed the financial terms or duration of the agreement, although Finance Director James Ghedotte told the council at a December budget meeting that the city got $51,000 in naming rights revenue last year.

The non-binding opinion from Joshua Jones, deputy bureau chief for the attorney general's Public Access Bureau, concludes that the city contracted with the Slammers "to perform a governmental function" for the public benefit in negotiating the naming rights agreement.

Even though the agreement is not in the public record, Jones wrote, "this office has not received any information suggesting that it does not directly relate to the governmental function of managing the City-owned stadium."