Open Illinois.org

The Illinois Legislature recently released new provisions and changes to the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA as it is commonly referred.

The article referenced lists the following changes as:

*Elimination of criminal penalties to punish public officials who refuse to release records.

* Increasing civil penalties to between $1,000 and $5,000. Under the package put forth by the attorney general, the maximum civil fine would have been $1,000.

* A blanket prohibition on releasing home addresses and license plate numbers. (What do they honestly have to hide, probably Honesty)

* Allowing public officials to satisfy FOIA requests with paper records, and charging for each page, rather than providing information in electronic format. (This is nothing more than inconvenience. I guess they need revenue from somewhere. )

* Stripping provisions that would bar government from claiming most exemptions to the law if FOIA requests aren’t addressed within five working days. (No one said government is expedient, but this just takes it a little bit too far…)

* Restoring language that states information in personnel files can be kept secret. The attorney general’s version didn’t include references to personnel files, but the Statehouse version adds medical files “or other similar files” to the list of files in which privacy must be considered before information can be released.

* Reducing the power of a proposed public access counselor who would be tasked with refereeing disputes over public records. (So they are going to effectively make the referee ineffective; a kind of  little engine that could mentality is needed to combat this provision.)

Information is a right of the citizenry and as such should not be curtailed and shredded at a whim. It seems that, even though the state has gotten rid of Blago, the legislators still have more to hide. The proposed changes fly in the face of all that is proper in governance and should be an offense to all citizens of Illinois, and to the trees for all the paper that is being wasted. Talk about not being green.

If Illinois is to ever be a fully transparent state, the legislators seriously can’t think that this is even remotely acceptable and in fact, it just goes to show that it is politics as usual in Springfield.