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.

The “Local Transparency Project”, a project of the non-partisan Illinois Policy Institute, consists of two separate transparency audits 6 weeks apart on 10 different online transparency categories including elected & administrative official contacts, meetings, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), budgets, financial audits, expenditures, employee’s salary & benefits, contracts, lobbying, and taxes & fees information.

Overall Transparency rankings for the New Trier Township area are listed below. Full details attached here in excel.

Scores accurate as of July 8th.

A special thank you goes out to Illinois Policy Institute Intern Rhys Seiffe, a resident of Wilmette, who led this transparency audit effort.

An audit of the Barrington Township area in Northwestern Cook County revealed no local government agencies graded received a passing grade on basic online transparency guidelines.

The “Local Transparency Project”, a project of the non-partisan Illinois Policy Institute, consists of two separate transparency audits 6 weeks apart on 10 different online transparency categories including elected & administrative official contacts, meetings, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), budgets, financial audits, expenditures, employee’s salary & benefits, contracts, lobbying, and taxes & fees information.

Overall Transparency rankings for the Barrington Township area are listed below. Full details attached here in excel.

Scores as of July 8th.

An audit of the Hanover Township area in Northwestern Cook County revealed only 1 of 12 local government agencies graded received a passing grade on basic online transparency guidelines.

The “Local Transparency Project”, a project of the non-partisan Illinois Policy Institute, consists of two separate transparency audits 6 weeks apart on 10 different online transparency categories including elected & administrative official contacts, meetings, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), budgets, financial audits, expenditures, employee’s salary & benefits, contracts, lobbying, and taxes & fees information.

Overall Transparency rankings for the Hanover Township area are listed below. Full details attached here in excel.

These scores are accurate as of July 7th, 2010.

An audit of the Palatine Township area in Northwestern Cook County revealed only 1 of 12 local government agencies graded received a passing grade on basic online transparency guidelines.

The “Local Transparency Project”, a project of the non-partisan Illinois Policy Institute, consists of two separate transparency audits 6 weeks apart on 10 different online transparency categories including elected & administrative official contacts, meetings, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), budgets, financial audits, expenditures, employee’s salary & benefits, contracts, lobbying, and taxes & fees information.

Overall Transparency rankings for the Palatine Township area are listed below. Full details attached in excel.

Scores as of July 8th

Thanks to Eric Di Silvestro of Palatine for his volunteer work on this project.

An 6-month follow up audit of the Schaumburg Township area in Northwestern Cook County revealed that still only 4 of 18 local government agencies graded received a passing grade on basic online transparency guidelines.

The “Local Transparency Project”, a project of the non-partisan Illinois Policy Institute, consists of two separate transparency audits 6 weeks apart on 10 different online transparency categories including elected & administrative official contacts, meetings, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), budgets, financial audits, expenditures, employee’s salary & benefits, contracts, lobbying, and taxes & fees information.

Overall Transparency rankings for the Schaumburg Township area are listed below. Full details attached here in excel.

Scores as of July 8th.

Harper College results included in Palatine Township audit.

The site, at cookcountyclerk.com, lists all 188 registered lobbyists in the county, what they’re lobbying about, who they’re contacting, and what they’re being paid.

Cook County Clerk David Orr said the site makes the lobbying registration process easier and more useful because it’s paperless, available to the public 24 hours a day, requires reporting within 48 hours, and discloses a previously unavailable database that can be searched by keyword, lobbyist or official.

According to the Cook County Clerk’s website, the database is the result of the Lobbyist Sunshine Initiative, a package of amendments proposed by Orr and Bridget Gainer (D-10^th district) that was unanimously adopted by the County Board on October 6^th, 2009. Cook County Clerk David Orr said, “We’re now getting information already that we didn’t get before…We believe it’s quite successful in trying to shed light on who’s trying to influence government.”

The website is a step in the right direction in making Cook County government more transparent. As Rep. Gainer said, the new database “gives taxpayers the upper hand.”

To read the whole Daily Herald article, click here.

The Institute argued against this bill, saying it would threaten transparency in government by prohibiting the release of public employee performance reviews under FOIA. The idea started with some lawmakers wanting to exempt teachers’ performance evaluations, and then it expanded to all public employees.

Fortunately, the State Journal Register reports, “Quinn’s change to House Bill 5154 would exempt only state and local law enforcement personnel from the requirement that performance evaluations be public information.”

This is definitely an improvement:

Quinn wrote in his veto message, “House Bill 5154 exempts all public employees’ performance evaluations from disclosure under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This exemption is a departure from groundbreaking legislation that I approved just last year, making our State’s open information laws among the most robust in the entire country.”

However, Quinn thinks public safety officials should have their evaluations kept from public view: “If disclosed, these evaluations could be used by criminal suspects or defendants to undermine a police investigation or attack the credibility and integrity of a police officer,” Quinn wrote.

Quinn has made a positive move regarding this bill. If it had received his signature as is, its passage would have been a major step backwards in the movement for more transparency and accountability in government.

To find this information on our IllinoisOpenGov.org website, click on “Payroll” and search “Polygraph Examiner” in the “Position” field.