Prairie State Wire

The city of Chicago’s newly formed Monuments Project Advisory Committee instantly went mum.

The committee Mayor Lori Lightfoot put together during the height of the city’s unrest over the issue of police brutality hasn’t been publicly heard from for the first six months of its existence.

And that’s just the way the mayor seems to want it, with city officials recently delivering a “what’s said here, stays here” message to members during a recent gathering.

Among the committee’s central tasks is identifying any public monuments associated with white supremacy and injustice that “warrant attention” and should be considered for removal.

According to the Better Government Association (BGA), to date 41 art structures across the city have been flagged, including statues of Christopher Columbus and Presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley.

Shockingly to some, no public notice was given of those meetings and very few records were made publicly available, even though Lightfoot committed to transparency at the time she formed the group.   

Citizen Advocacy Center attorney Benjamin Silver said it all strikes him as strange given all the interest in the work of the committee.  

“Even if they are not subject to the Open Meetings Act, there is the question of voluntary transparency,” he said. “They have now flagged 41 monuments. And whether anyone agrees or disagrees with those choices, I think there is a public interest in knowing how they reached that decision.”

More recently, city officials say the program has moved into a new phase, with a website being launched that encourages visitors to share their thoughts.

Between then and now, BGA officials also filed a complaint charging violations to the Open Meetings Act as they sought to better understand what went into the decision to target the monuments that were.

What comes next seems anyone’s guess, with committee members scheduled to make recommendations and produce a final report with “documentation of the process and [their] recommendations” in the near future.