CARBONDALE - Southern Illinois University Carbondale wins round one of the battle against two Southern Illinois newspapers for disclosure of university employment contracts.

Judge Leo Zappa in the circuit court for the Seventh Judicial Circuit in Sangamon County on Wednesday granted the university's motion for summary judgment in Count II of the lawsuit brought by The Southern Illinoisan and by Jerry Reppert, publisher of the Anna Gazette Democrat.

The judge's order refers to Copley Press, Inc. v. Board of Education for Peoria School District 150, a prior case ruled by the Illinois Appellate Court that personnel files are exempt from records that must be made public under the Freedom of Information Act.

Zappa's order states that "a document cannot be made part of a personnel file simply by placing it there… (but) the requested records in the case at bar are the type one would expect to find in a personnel file, and thus are per se exempt from disclosure."

The judge noted and emphasized from the prior case that the "plain and ordinary meaning" of a personnel file could "reasonably be expected to include documents such as a resume or application (or) an employment contract" among other items.

Not exempt from FOIA, he noted, are names, salaries, titles and dates of employment.

The FOIA request, filed March 31 by the Anna Gazette-Democrat, asked the university to provide copies of contracts from 2001 to 2006.

The requested employment contracts were for SIUC Chancellor Walter Wendler, SIU President Glenn Poshard, former SIU President James Walker, Paul Simon Public Policy Institute Director Mike Lawrence and visiting professor John Jackson.

In August, the two newspapers filed a lawsuit in Sangamon County Circuit Court, saying the university unjustly rejected a FOIA request for the contracts.

Poshard defended the university's decision to withhold copies of the employment contracts, saying that salaries and benefits are public record, but other information in the contracts was protected under state privacy laws.

"Contracts include a lot more than just salary and benefits," Poshard said in an earlier interview with The Southern Illinoisan. "In contracts, with public employees, sometimes the university requires other things."

Donald M. Craven, attorney for the plaintiffs, said the state constitution requires disclosure of any contract that requires public funding.

"Freedom of Information in Illinois has reached a new low," he wrote to Reppert and to the publisher and editor of the Southern Illinoisan on Thursday.

"During the argument (in court), (Judge Zappa) had trouble with the notion that the General Assembly intended to keep employment contracts secret, but obviously found bound by the Copley Peoria (the case referred to, above) decision," his letter states.

The Anna Gazette-Democrat is a weekly newspaper published in Anna.

The Southern Illinoisan is a daily newspaper published in Carbondale.

Enacted in 1984, the Illinois Freedom of Information Act is designed to allow open access to government records while still protecting government interests and privacy of individuals.

The primary mandate of the act states that "each public body shall make available to any person for inspection or copying all public records."