Public knowledge obstructed in Schaumburg
Liberty Leader Brian Costin has been showing up at Schaumburg village board meetings for years. Lately he’s been on a mission to ensure that the public have access to documents that show how officials spend taxpayer dollars.
To publicize his efforts, Brian has launched a website, where he writes about his efforts and the roadblocks that have been placed in his way by trustees. In the Transparency section of SchaumburgFreedom.com, Brian writes:
All 6 members of the Schaumburg Village Board, and Mayor Al Larson, have rejected idea of an open and transparent government, and have refused to sign the Transparency in Government pledge created by the Illinois Policy Institute and promoted by the Schaumburg Freedom Coalition.
While we will continue to push the Village Trustees and Mayor Al Larson to adopt our comprehensive transparency proposal, the citizens of Schaumburg shouldn’t have to wait any longer. The Schaumburg Freedom Coalition has started making Freedom of Information Act requests here.
More importantly than what Brian writes, however, is the information he’s collected through the Freedom of Information Act and posted on his website. Currently, the page includes Schaumburg Convention Center budgets from 2007-2009, and the village’s expenditure reports from October and November of last year. His call to action is: “Happy hunting!”
Brian plans to make more documents public as he receives them, a process that can take a good deal of time and money given the current opacity of the village board.
Brian tells me that some of his FOIA requests have gone unanswered because he’s asking for a document that doesn’t exist (not that he would know the village doesn’t have a list of all salaries and payments to employees):
“They have denied my request because I did not ask for a document that exists. They would have had to create the document and thus they did not have to provide me with a document that satisfied my request. It is exceedingly frustrating to have to try to guess what documents the Village of Schaumburg does or does not have. If they just had comprehensive transparency this whole process would be irrelevant and I could get to the business of finding waste and addressing policy.”
[...] Public knowledge obstructed in Schaumburg | Open Illinois.org. [...]
[...] Public knowledge obstructed in Schaumburg [...]
[...] welcome, it is saddening to see the Village of Schaumburg only respond to our pleas when they were shamed by bad press highlighting their obstruction of transparency and resistance to reforms. [...]
[...] The SFC has filed numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get more exact salary figures and to find out if our taxpayer dollars are being wisely spent. Unfortunately, the Village of Schaumburg has not responded to these requests and have repeatedly stated to us that “no such document exists” when asking for complete salary data for its employees. Is this a sign of poor financial controls or is the Village of Schaumburg government continuing its tradition of obstructing public knowledge? [...]
[...] The SFC has filed numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get more exact salary figures and to find out if our taxpayer dollars are being wisely spent. Unfortunately, the Village of Schaumburg has not responded to these requests and have repeatedly stated to us that “no such document exists” when asking for complete salary data for its employees. Is this a sign of poor financial controls or is the Village of Schaumburg government continuing its tradition of obstructing public knowledge? [...]