Bennett said local governments have increasingly relied on the Act to prevent information from being provided to the public."I don't think there's any question that it's had a detrimental effect," Bennett said of the FOIA. "My sense, and all of us here who deal routinely with the Freedom of Information Act and other access laws, the overwhelming consensus is that Illinois is less open today than it ever has been.
"The onus is on the person requesting the information to demonstrate why they should get it. That's not what the Freedom of Information Act is. It was never intended to be that. It was intended to make things open. All information is presumptively open unless you can demonstrate otherwise. But what actually happens these days is you have a pass a test."
For example, Maywood-Melrose Park School District 89's requires that anyone - taxpayers, newspapers, parents of students - wishing to see tax levy information this year request it in writing. In years past, the information - how much the public school district hopes to collect in property tax - has been routinely provided.
This denial of public information is often coupled with the abuse of local school, park, library and village boards illegally campaigning in favor of referenda that benefit them. Too often needed facts are suppressed and local boards deal in self-serving obfuscation. Here's an extensive quote from an email by reader about the Evanston referendum last fall (which fortunately failed):
I was eating lunch at the Prairie Diner (my favorite place) on Central and noticed a pamphlet about the new tax for "affordable" housing. I read through it, noting that it was a simple campaign piece, touting clean, safe affordable housing for everyone, thinking to throw it away,when I noticed that it was published by the City of Evanston, clearly a violation of election law.This has happened in Wilmette as well, starting with the school board some years ago, and spreading to the other local boards.
I call the City Manager, who connected me with the city lawyer who stated that they only had to present one side of the issue, because "if anyone was against it, they can just vote against the ordinance" which seemed loopy to me (so if anyone was for it, they needed city propaganda, but those against it can just vote on their own, without city guidance). The City Manager called me back and stated the same thing. Literally, they only had to present one side because if you were against it, you could just vote that way.
So, I called Dick Devine's office, who, to their credit, did give it a review and told me that they have 112 of these type of cases going on right now in Cook County, and that this was not that extreme (of course,Evanston are soft spoken despots, not meanies). So the lawyer I talked to called the City Manager to remind her that the City could not campaign on one side of a referendum issue.
I asked the lawyer why Evanston was not required to put out some balanced material on the referendum to which she stated "if you want to oppose it, you can print your own fliers and distribute them", which is an awesome answer...I can spend my tax dollars to campaign against a campaign that I can fund my self, so that the City can get more tax dollars to campaign for higher taxes. Seems like a despotic system.
The federal FOIA has nine exemptions. The Illinois law has FIFTY-SIX, turning the law on its head.
Yes, the law needs to be reformed, like just about everything else in Illinois government.
Do we have to rely on criminal prosecution as our only recourse? And even that won't happen if the laws are not enforced.
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