DeKalb city clerk under fire again for ‘chronically late, incomplete’ meeting minutes

DeKALB – City of DeKalb officials say they’re looking to appoint an official notetaker for City Council meetings, claiming City Clerk Sasha Cohen is violating state law by failing to perform clerical duties as required, leading to incomplete city records.

In response, Cohen on Thursday called the proposal an “assault on the independence” of the clerk’s office.

City officials say minutes taken by Cohen are “chronically late and incomplete,” include typographical errors and misspellings, fail to note which aldermen make motions or how they vote, and violate the Illinois Open Meetings Act, according to city documents published Thursday before Monday’s City Council meeting.

Five months into office, Cohen said Thursday he hasn’t been given training beyond the required OMA training stipulated for all public elected officials.

“I consider this an assault on the independence of the city clerk’s office by a mayor and corrupt city manager who seek to consolidate power,” Cohen said Thursday. “I have requested to be sent to [Municipal Clerks of Illinois] training and was denied – being told directly that I was unfit to be a public official because of my political views.”

According to Monday’s meeting agenda, council meeting minutes as far back as July 23 have not been approved. Minutes from city council meetings from Aug. 23 and Oct. 25 have not yet been submitted by the clerk. The City Council asked Cohen to redo minutes from Sept. 13 and Sept. 27 meetings, and the new versions of those minutes have also not been submitted, according to city documents.

It’s not the first time the clerk has been called out by city officials for failing to perform duties.

In August, Cohen issued a public apology during a City Council meeting, apologizing for a slack in duties and admitting he had for several weeks “allowed myself to become too preoccupied with other things that have been going on in my life.” At the time, Cohen said his actions resulted in his “quality of work to decline and for deadlines to be missed.”

City officials say in order to alleviate the ongoing clerical issues, the city council and Mayor Cohen Barnes wish to appoint Ruth Scott, the city’s executive assistant and former deputy clerk, as Recording Secretary to the City Council. That vote will take place at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 8, at the DeKalb Public Library.

Scott would be in charge of handling meeting minute protocol instead of Cohen effective immediately, if approved, “to assure the record of the council’s proceedings is faithfully kept and recorded.” Scott formerly served as deputy clerk until the position was eliminated in 2019 amid controversy surrounding previous city clerk Lynn Fazekas.

City Manager Bill Nicklas said incomplete meeting minutes “have been a larger problem, really, since the first official minutes he took,” after Cohen was sworn in on May 10.

“The minutes have never been professionally done and I tried to point that out,” Nicklas said. “And then he took a sabbatical without telling anybody, so Ruth filled in. What if an alderman three months from now says ‘I voted for X’ and there’s no record of that?”

Cohen said in August he’d taken summer work in the outdoor amusement industry and was working 60 hour weeks. The elected DeKalb clerk position is a part-time role. Nicklas said the goal is to ensure city records are kept efficiently.

“What the council is saying, from what I’ve gathered, is that they don’t have confidence in the ability of the current elected clerk to take adequate and professional minutes,” Nicklas said. “And they are very much aware that Ruth can do that.”

Clerk controversy

Cohen also fielded public calls to resign over the summer after voicing his personal views related to police, saying he considers himself “a police abolitionist” and believes “all cops are bad.”

Cohen ran officially unopposed on the April 2021 ballot after running a failed campaign in 2020 for DeKalb County Board. Write-in candidate Stephanie Turner, an employee of the City of DeKalb, received 17.73% of the vote, or 490 votes, while Cohen received 2,273 votes, or 82.27%.

“The people of the city will see through this blatant attack on our transparent process and hold Mayor Barnes accountable at the next election, if this succeeds,” Cohen said Thursday, referring to the potential council vote on Monday. “The voters elected me as a city clerk to perform the duties of city clerk, not to have them vested in an unelected bureaucrat.”

City Council meetings include an open portion which the public can witness in its entirety – and often a closed portion called an executive session – during which council and city officials meet privately to discuss items like litigation, personnel or disciplinary plans.

According to the Illinois Open Meetings Act, meeting minutes from an open session of City Council meetings must be approved by the public body within 30 days of the meeting, or the second subsequent meeting. Within 10 days after the council’s vote to approve the minutes, the record must be publicly posted, usually on a website.

The Nov. 8 City Council vote on the matter will be advisory and staff will be seeking direction from the council on how to proceed. If the council is agreeable to the changes, it is expected to vote on formalizing the recording secretary position by amended city code at its Nov. 22 meeting.

City documents state “such action will not change or diminish the duties of the City Clerk.” Among the clerk’s other duties are notarizing important documents for the city and administering elections.

“The action will provide the council with the means to assure the minutes of council proceedings in regular session, executive session and special session will be professionally completed and submitted in a timely fashion,” according to city documents.

A public officer was a topic of discussion in a closed executive session portion of the Oct. 25 meeting, according to city documents, although it’s unclear whether Cohen was the subject of that conversation.

The line item in question on that Oct. 25 meeting was “to discuss the appointment, discipline, performance or removal of a public officer,” and then cited Illinois Municipal Code which lists exceptions for when to close off public portions of government meetings.