The second occurred when the Senate failed to override Gov. Quinn’s changes to the Sunshine Commission Act (HB4836). Here’s a good recap on this from the State Journal Register’s Doug Finke:

* There was a bill introduced nearly a year ago that went by the name “The Sunshine Commission Act.”  Sunshine, transparency (and forensic audit for that matter) are words currently in vogue in state government. They impart a purity of purpose that lawmakers usually don’t achieve by, you know, just doing their jobs.

The bill came out of the House Republican caucus and had about three-dozen co-sponsors signed onto it.  It called for the four legislative leaders to appoint a panel consisting of four lawmakers and four members of the public. The panel was to “conduct a thorough review of the relevance, efficiency, and effectiveness of each state executive branch program.”  In other words, look at the programs run by state agencies under the governor and see if they work and should be continued.

Sounds good, right? You’d get sort of an outsider’s perspective on ways to fix government.  Lawmakers thought so, too.  The bill passed the House 114-0 and the Senate 54-0.  It was sent to Quinn.

Quinn decided to make it better, however.  Rather than sign the bill, he rewrote it to give himself four appointees on the panel. He also changed the qualifications needed by the public members selected to serve on the panel. He said the original version “represents only a limited number of corporate special interests. The people of our state deserve better.”

Maybe, but now the people will be getting nothing.

When the governor changes a bill like that, both the House and Senate either have to accept the changes or reject them. If both chambers don’t vote to do the same thing, the bill goes pffft.

The House voted to reject Quinn’s changes, believing it would be difficult to get an objective evaluation of the governor’s operations with the governor’s people on the panel. The Senate tried to do the same. But when the vote was taken, Republicans mostly voted to dump the Quinn changes (like the House did), and the Democrats mostly voted to keep them. Bottom line, the sunshine commission is dead for now.

Another valuable reminder that too much sunshine (in life or in government) can cause problems.

* While we’re on the subject, the best line during the sunshine bill debate came from Sen. DALE RIGHTER, R-Mattoon.

“We need a see-through government,” Righter said, urging his colleagues to save the bill by scrapping Quinn’s changes.

It’s a great line because, about 12 hours earlier, Righter voted with 47 other senators to shield the performance evaluations of public employees from the state’s open records laws.

Guess you want see-through government, but with certain parts blacked out for family viewing.

The votes on the performance evaluations bill had many scratching their heads. Only three senators, Murphy, Duffy and McCarter, voted no. Take a look at the voting roster and see for yourself.

The whole point of transparency in government is to provide a tool for citizens to hold their elected officials more accountable. Despite these setbacks, we are eager for next year and look forward to working towards bringing more transparency to Illinois. Be sure to keep an eye out, and if you want to get involved and help bring more transparency to your local or state government, check out our volunteer Liberty Leaders program and contact us!

The website aims to provide citizens and elected officials with model legislation and tools to launch reforms and expand the amount of information available about government.

As Michael Barnhart of Sunshine Review explains, “State and local governments, and school districts, have an affirmative obligation to proactively share the information people need to hold officials accountable for how tax money is spent and how the people’s business is conducted. We must set the bar for state and local government transparency.”

Barnhart suggests state and local governments all need to meet a “sunshine standard” so there is a consistent pattern across the board for government to be defined as “transparent.” The standard includes:

1. Budgets for current and previous years, with a graph showing increases or decreases over time to help citizens evaluate and understand trends in local government spending, including spending for salaries. The checkbook register and credit card receipts should also be posted.
2. Open-meeting laws should be posted, along with notices about public meetings of the governing board, minutes of past meetings, and a schedule and agendas for future and past meetings.
3. Public officials should be listed online by name with contact information, e-mail addresses and the elected official’s voting record. The names of key administrators and their contact information, including e-mail addresses, also should be posted.
4. Building permits and zoning applications should be available for review and downloading. In addition, citizens should be able to submit and track applications online.
5. Audit information should be available for online inspection, including report results, audit schedules and performance audits of government programs.
6. Contract rules should be posted, along with bids and contracts for purchases over $10,000, as well as vendors’ campaign contributions to government contract decision makers.
7. Lobbying contributions to any publicly funded lobbying associations that contribute taxpayer money to other associations should be disclosed.
8. Public records should include the name of the person who is in charge of fulfilling open-records requests, along with contact information for that person.
9. Tax information should be comprehensibly posted in a central location, including and accounting for all state “fees” such as driver’s licenses, all tax documents for all elected officials and identified sources of revenue for each department and agency.

For more on this, read Barnhart’s take and be sure to visit http://sunshinestandard.org.

Check out some new spending data available on our spending transparency website, IllinoisOpenGov.org.

We have included school vendor information for you to check out! We’ll also be updating current information (Payroll, Checks to Businesses & People, Retiree Data) soon, so keep a eye out for that too.

Check out a new paper on TIF, highlighting the need for more transparency, a stricter definition of “blight,” and more public control in the TIF process.

October 18, 2010

by Frank Medina

The Illinois Policy Institute announced last night that School District 86 has received a failing grade when it comes to fiscal transparency.  The poor marks come on the heels of a recent audit conducted by the Institute’s Local Transparency Project.

According to their website, the group independently audits local government taxing bodies to determine their level of fiscal transparency. The Illinois Policy Institute has developed a 10-point transparency checklist to hold government and elected officials accountable to the citizens and taxpayers, and provide a “best practices” framework to improve government transparency all across Illinois.

“The goal is not to penalize districts with this information but rather to raise awareness of the issues to encourage them to take the necessary steps so that they can raise their scores during the next audit,” stated Steve Woodward, a Burr Ridge resident who helped conduct the audit of District 86..

In order to receive a transparency grade of “A”, a governing body must score a minimum of 90 points.  District 86′s audit produced a score of 33.75.

The Local Transparency Project conducts its audits by visiting the public websites of local government taxing bodies and evaluating how much information is posted about the ten categories on their checklist. These categories range from contact information for elected officials and senior administrators to budget data for the past five years. A total of ten points is awarded for each of the ten categories for a maximum score of one hundred.

According to the report, District 86 only received a perfect score in one category, information related to Elected and Administrative Officials. The District received a score of 2 or less in seven of the ten categories.

Woodward stressed why transparency is an issue district residents ought to be very concerned about. “When you consider that 75% of your property taxes go to public education in district 86 and 181 it’s not a small amount that these bodies control.  I think awareness of how these monies are spent is more important than ever because property tax revenues are a finite source.”

Regarding the report, Dr. Nicholas D. Wahl, Superintendent of Schools for District 86 stated, “Tonight was the first time the Board heard about this report by the Illinois Policy Institute and I haven’t had an opportunity to read it yet but I look forward to doing so. However, transparency is something we all support which is why we already post our information online.”

District 86 is currently embroiled in a controversy surrounding transparency issues involving a board member and unedited district documents.  School board member Dianne Barrett filed a lawsuit against the district in July, claiming that she was not allowed to view documents involving special education services.  Barrett maintained that it was her fiscal duty as a board member to be able to view that information.  The board disagreed and is currently seeking to have the lawsuit thrown out of court.

Balancing the budget is important, but TIFs were not created to be used by elected officials looking to fill budget gaps. Using TIFs in this manner actually encourages the irresponsible spending that leads to massive budget deficits, and TIFs should be used solely to provide low-income communities with a way of furthering their economic development. Taxpayers deserve a more responsible, transparent TIF process that would foster more government accountability, improve public understanding, and help enforce ethical behavior for everyone involved in TIF management and financing.

Mayoral candidates looking to fill Daley’s seat are starting to talk TIF, calling for more transparency and questioning the practice of creating TIF districts in areas that are not exactly blighted.

TIF is an issue that needs to be talked about more and more so people can start better understanding it and start realizing its significant impact on their communities and pocketbooks. It’s good to see TIF has the potential to be a central issue in Chicago’s mayoral race.

For more information about TIF, see the Illinois Policy Institute’s take on the topic.

Recipients of 352 federal stimulus contracts, grants and loans have failed to report how they spent the money, the status of their projects or how many jobs were funded, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Many failing to report stimulus spending are repeat offenders, and enforcing transparency remains spotty.

Apparently, the “Department of Agriculture has the biggest problem: 100 recipients receiving $103 million have failed to submit reports.”

Here’s a breakdown of recipients of more than $162 million in federal stimulus spending that have failed to report what they’ve done with the money:

Department or agency	Awards not reporting	Total (in millions)
Agriculture	100	$103.3
Health & Human Services	73	$22.4
General Services Administration	6	$8.5
Education	48	$6.2
Justice	38	$3.7
National Science Foundation	8	$3.4
Bureau of Land Management	21	$3.1
Bureau of Indian Affairs	19	$2.5
State	3	$2.1
Housing & Urban Development	2	$1.7
Homeland Security	3	$1.2
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration	3	$1.0
Others	28	$3.7
Total	352	$162.8

Source: USA TODAY analysis of Office of Management and Budget data

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.