When Howard Weinstein moved to Evanston in 1997, he heard a lot of talk about the possible construction of a shopping and entertainment complex on Church Street. Weinstein decided to attend City Council meetings to find out more about the project.

After watching the meetings for several months, he said he began to think that the council was holding too many closed sessions and was not making it clear what was being discussed, a violation of the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

“My understanding is that the government is supposed to be open,” Weinstein said. “People are supposed to be able to know what’s going on if they want to.”

Weinstein’s complaints to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office led to an investigation of the council’s executive sessions by Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Karen Griffin in late 1998. The investigation came to a head last week when the office charged the council with several violations of the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

The act, which is designed to ensure that citizens are informed about the actions of their government, says all meetings should be conducted in a public forum. Exceptions may be made only in a few cases, including meetings concerning the sale and purchase of real estate and sessions about personnel matters.

In a 14-page letter to Herbert Hill, an attorney for the city, Griffin specified three main areas in which the council violated the act.

The first two violations dealt with procedural errors, Griffin said. When making a motion to begin an executive session, which is closed to the public, the council is required to cite the specific exception that is being used to justify a closed meeting. And once this exception has been stated, the council cannot discuss any other matter in the executive session, even if it is covered by another exception, she said.

But in several meetings, many held between July and September 1999 when the council was discussing the Church Street Plaza project, the council violated these rules, Griffin said. Council members only generally stated what they planned to discuss in the closed meeting and then discussed other business covered by an exception that hadn’t been cited in the public forum, Griffin said.

The letter also charged the council with a more serious violation — discussing matters behind closed doors that were not covered by any of the 22 exceptions to the act and therefore should have been considered in a public forum.

While the matters discussed were related to topics covered by exceptions, Griffin said they went beyond the exceptions’ “narrow confines” and should have been discussed openly.

Ald. Edmund Moran (6th) said many other aldermen had a “pretty strong desire” to discuss as much as possible about the Church Street Plaza project in closed sessions so the project’s opponents wouldn’t be able to build a stronger case.

But Ald. Arthur Newman (1st) said this type of political maneuver wouldn’t be possible because the aldermen don’t put items on the agenda for the executive session. The city manager, assistant city manager and other staff members decide what will be discussed and are supposed to clear those decisions through the city’s corporation counsel, he said.

While Griffin said the procedural problems would be “easily remedied,” she also said the other violation would “require a more fundamental rethinking by the City Council of the appropriate and limited use of closed sessions.”

Margaret Newman, a member of the now-disbanded citizen’s group Coalition for Appropriate Development — which was opposed to Church Street Plaza — said she had been concerned about the council’s secrecy throughout most of the debate about the project.

She said she feared that many decisions regarding the development were made behind closed doors “to keep these conversations out of the public eye.”

“I don’t think they violated just the letter of the law,” she said. “I think they violated the spirit of the law in a big way.”

Ald. Steven Bernstein (4th) said the council never intended to break the law and the aldermen only wanted to protect the city’s financial interests for future negotiations.

He said the council will be more specific about what is going to be discussed in executive session from now on and will be more careful about staying on topics covered by the exceptions.

“Clearly we’ve been spanked, and we’re going to clean up our act,” Bernstein said. “We live and we learn.”