Sunshine Review has released a paper about taxpayer-funded lobbying in Illinois, reporting information about lobbying contracts and membership in taxpayer-funded lobbying associations. Taxpayer-funded lobbying associations are groups funded at least in part by public dollars that lobby for the collective interests of government bodies.

The paper reports 31 lobbyists represent the counties, and the counties hold at least 69 memberships to taxpayer-funded lobbying associations. The 10 most populous counties in Illinois alone spent $6.2 million dollars between 2005 and 2010 on lobbying.

Few citizens know tax dollars are spent to hire lobbyists. Without affirmative disclosure laws, citizens and media rarely see any information about taxpayer-funded lobbying and only through Freedom of Information Act requests can someone get this information from the government. More government transparency is surely needed in this area.

For more findings from Sunshine Review, click here.

Does a casino, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool sound like recreation or entertainment to you?

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ranking Member on the Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, has sent a letter to Earl Devaney, Chairman of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, “regarding stimulus funding being steered for projects that appear to violate the explicit prohibitions of the Recovery Act.”

Part of Issa’s letter reads:

“Despite the clear language of the Recovery Act and the subsequent effort by the White House to stress the importance of avoiding the use of stimulus funds for prohibited projects, taxpayer dollars were directed to entities legally barred from receiving them. In fact, stimulus money appears to have flowed to each and every type of project prohibited by Section 1604 of the AARA.”

· Casino: In February 2009, AARA funds were provided to students “at Fortune Bay Resort & Casino to get hands on experience in various departments within the resort and casino at our Career Expo Day.”

· Aquarium: In July 2009, AARA funds were awarded to Northwestern University for scientific research on fish. Part of the funding was used for “novel outreach projects (that) will expose the broader public to the results of research, including an art installation concerning the electric fields emitted by these fish and proposed enhancements to the electric fish displays of the Shedd Aquarium.”

· Zoo: In September of 2009, $25 million in ARRA funds were awarded to the Smithsonian for projects including the “completion of various projects at the National Zoo.”

· Golf Course: AARA funds were awarded to the Forest Hills Golf Course through a U.S. Department of Education grant to the Oregon Department of Education. The award funds a program that allows students in Oregon’s Forest Grove school district to use Forest Hills to learn to golf as part of the physical education curriculum.

· Swimming Pool: In July 2009, AARA funds were awarded to Northwestern University to provide “salary an wage compensation for individuals directly involved in AARA-funded projects” including “Pool Lifeguard.”

Issa also notes “impudent projects” such as spending stimulus money on a “waterpark, a bowling alley, a keg, beer and cigarette mart, a pet hotel, and a fraternity and sorority event.”

This is putting America to work?

Read more here.

In case you missed it, LA Times reporters Jason Felch, Jason Song and Doug Smith used California’s public records law to obtain seven years of math and English test scores from the Los Angeles Unified School District. They asked Richard Buddin, a well-respected analyst at the RAND Corporation, to run the numbers and estimate teacher effectiveness — just as many states around the country are considering, and in a few cases starting to do.

The story was an eye-opener. The Times didn’t just present the results; it named names. Much of this sort of data never sees the light of day. What’s more, according to the story: “The district has had the ability to analyze the differences among teachers for years but opted not to do so, in large part because of anticipated union resistance.”

The story has created an interesting response, from teachers, unions, education scholars and more. See here for some reactions and the full story, including remarks from Jay P. Greene, 21st Century Chair in Education Reform at the University of Arkansas:

“It’s no longer possible to hide the fact that there are some awful teachers who continue receiving paychecks and depriving kids of an education,” he wrote. “School officials have had these data for years and never used them, never tried to identify who were the best and worst teachers, and never tried to remove bad teachers from the profession. It took a newspaper and a big [freedom of information] request.”

Transparency is a great tool for measuring what government programs, or in this case, which teachers, are performing well or poorly. Increased transparency can mean increased government accountability, but only if government receives continued pressure from the public and media and fully utilizes this tool.

For the full story on the LA Times piece, click here.

While the stimulus has been defended as an endeavor to spur job creation, no jobs were created on a $1 million expenditure to buy iPod Touches for students in Utah meant to be loaded “with educational applications that teachers hope will motivate students. Such applications include guides to identify trees, leaves and bird calls.”

Another project singled out in the report is a $498,000 grant to a unit of the American Legacy Foundation, which will provide BlackBerry Curve smart phones to Washington residents trying to quit smoking. The predominately low-income smokers who receive the phones may call a hotline or use the phones’ software capabilities to help with their addiction. Two jobs will be created by the program, a spokesman said.

The stimulus was passed without much time for people to observe what was actually included in it. With such haste and little transparency, wasteful spending should come as no surprise to the average taxpayer. With more transparency and openness about what the government is actually spending money on, taxpayers can have the opportunity to scrutinize projects like these and cut wasteful spending at a time when it is desperately needed.

To read the entire article, click here.

Stroger’s staff has lowered minimum job qualifications, pretended not to know job applicants when they did, tried to invoke emergency hiring powers and fed job test answers to applicants with political sponsors.

“The goal is to hire certain people, and they will take whatever steps are needed to get to that goals,” monitor Mary Robinson said in an interview. That attitude has worsened in some quarters since Stroger finished last in a four-way Democratic primary in February, even as improvements were made in other areas, she said.

Eugene Mullins, Stroger’s spokesman, responded to the charges saying all of the firings were from failure to live up to expectations and all those hired were qualified for the work they were doing. One person specifically mentioned in the report was Carla Oglesby, Stroger’s former campaign spokeswoman. Oglesby was given a $120,000-a-year chief of staff post but was suspended when it was discovered that she authorized a $25,000 contract to her own public relations firm. “But Stroger quickly put her back on the payroll, even as an inspector general’s investigation into contracts she authorized continues.”

The findings in this report show what transparency can reveal when it comes to corrupt and inefficient hiring. Unfortunately, it took a court-ordered FBI probe for this information to become public. Instead, Cook County should aim to be transparent so such hiring and firing are never even considered.

To read the whole article, click here.

While Gov. Quinn talks about the necessity of cutting the deficit – despite only cutting $155 million in next year’s appropriations – he gives raises to his staff. Governor Quinn needs to recognize the desperate state of Illinois’s finances means giving generous raises to personal staff should be a very low priority.

To read the whole article, click here. To see a brief response by Quinn, click here.

The report also reveals Chicago’s sweeping disregard for the Freedom of Information Act:

The problem, it seems, is that public officials in Chicago act like it’s their money – and their government. Aside from relying on your money to fund them, you are incidental at best and a treacherous obstacle at worst.

The Beachwood provides a slew of examples highlighting the City of Chicago’s poor response, which you can find here.

Sound familiar?

• Offer government administrators a valuable tool to help drive cost savings and better health care outcomes;
• Allow taxpayers greater insight into how their dollars are spent by state government;
• Fulfill a recommendation of the Taxpayer Action Board; and
• Promote an open and transparent state government.

If implemented, Medicaid Transparency would inject much-needed sunshine into how Medicaid is managed and help establish more government accountability and public understanding about the program.

For updates on the the status of Medicaid Transparency, follow this link.

For more information on HB5241, check out the Institute’s testimony (http://www.illinoispolicy.org/news/article.asp?ArticleSource=2227) in front of the Illinois House of Representatives Medicaid Reform, Family & Children Services Committee.

Will other vendors start doing the same?

This story may become more common as more companies lose trust in the state’s ability to pay its bills, and it quite clearly reveals the state is not running government as efficiently or cost-effectively as it could, which isn’t much of a surprise to most people at this point. Businesses need to react and make changes to operation when finances turn south. Our state government needs to do the same and change course from business as usual.

The state could turn its budget situation around by taking action in a number of areas, and the Illinois Policy Institute has offered many ideas, including forming a Council on Efficient Government, taking advantage of online reverse auctions, Budget Solutions 2010, and the 2010 Legislators’ Guide to the Issues, to name a few.

If companies in Illinois won’t even do business with the state, what are taxpayers to think? This is just one more reason to be concerned about how the state is spending tax dollars. For an inside look into the details of state spending, check out www.IllinoisOpenGov.org, and you can even look up Shore Galleries Inc. under expenses made by the Illinois Department of Corrections if you’re curious.