General Records Exemptions

74 Illinois PAC opinions and determination letters about general records exemptions.

General Records Exemptions: what the decisions show

General records exemptions cover public body claims that requested records may be withheld as private information, preliminary or deliberative material, commercial or trade secret information, or otherwise protected from disclosure. The requests in these decisions involved settlement agreements, license applications, utility bills, development and construction submissions, correspondence, datasets, videos, and medical or technical records.

Across these decisions, the Public Access Counselor has generally rejected broad or unsupported exemption claims and found violations where bodies withheld entire records or redacted names and factual material without showing the exemption applied. Limited exceptions were recognized where engineers’ technical submissions qualified as construction-related technical documents, and where records sought as copies were already available for inspection.

At a glance: 74 documents from 2014 to 2025(21 binding opinions, 53 determination letters). Outcome: 38 found a violation (in whole or part), 33 found none. Most often cited alongside: 7(1)(f) (Preliminary drafts, notes, and deliberative materials) (22); 7(1)(c) (Personal privacy) (19); 7(1)(a) (Confidential under other federal or State law) (12); 7(1)(b) (Private information) (11); 7(1)(g) (Trade secrets and confidential commercial/financial information) (6).

Recurring issues

Public bodies withheld settlement agreements based on confidentiality, nondisparagement, or privacy language in the agreements. (Settlement agreements for legal counsel payments, A settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit, Settlement agreements under the personal privacy exemption)
Public bodies redacted names, addresses, and occupancy or licensing details as private information or under other confidentiality provisions. (Excel file of scattered-site unit addresses and occupancy status, Residential parking exception letters with names, Applications for cannabis cultivation center licenses)
Public bodies withheld developer budgets, non-disclosure agreements, venue contracts, and test results as commercial, trade secret, or proprietary information. (A non-disclosure agreement for a commercial development project, Developer cost records for a city-funded redevelopment project, Contracts and correspondence for a concert at a public arena)
Public bodies withheld correspondence, traffic data, presentations, and legal-related letters as preliminary, deliberative, attorney-client, or settlement-negotiation material. (Email attachments between school board members, Communications about a zoning change with a private applicant, Traffic count data from roadway monitoring)

Practical points

A private confidentiality or nondisparagement provision does not by itself establish that a settlement agreement is exempt.
Names and purely factual material should not be withheld without showing private, confidential, predecisional, or otherwise exempt circumstances.
Construction-related technical submissions and records already made available for inspection have been treated differently from general commercial or administrative records.

Summary drafted from the linked decisions and checked against them; read the decisions themselves before relying on it. Not legal advice.