Attorney general to Cook County: Budgets are public documents

Cook County public officials made an abrupt about-face Friday after contending for a week that a nearly $1 billion budget plan was not a public document subject to public review.

The hurried reversal came just hours after Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan weighed in on the subject at the request of the Daily Herald.

The newspaper made the request after Cook County Hospitals and Health Systems leaders Interim CEO David Small and Chairman Warren Batts insisted that the budget was not public because it was a "draft" not subject to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

Public access advocates were floored that the county maintained that position for nearly five hours after the hospital board had debated, voted on and unanimously approved the budget.

"That's final action by the board. There's nothing left to do," said an incredulous Don Craven, lawyer for the Illinois Press Association and an expert on the act.

Batts and Small maintained that because Cook County Board President Todd Stroger still had to review the document, and possibly adjust it before he submits to the county board an overall budget that includes the hospital system, the document was a "draft."

Even if the document could conceivably be labeled a draft, Craven noted, under the act, the "draft" lost its exemption and become public at the Sept. 26 finance meeting when David Carvahlo, chairman of the finance committee, publicly commented on it and discussed it at that meeting, Craven said.

Madigan was of a similar opinion.

"If it's accurate what you're saying, (that) they voted on this in a public meeting and approved this, it's a public record and they have to give it to you," said Robyn Ziegler, spokeswoman for Madigan.

Told of that informal opinion, county Chief Financial Officer Donna Dunnings said she would have Stroger's lawyer, Laura Lechowicz Felicione, research it in conjunction with the state's attorney.

But the position had clearly been researched before Friday. Carvalho told the Daily Herald Sept. 26 that county attorneys had assured him the "draft" was exempt, even though he had commented on it at a public meeting.

Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley, noting Carvalho is a Harvard educated lawyer, refused to give him a pass as a victim of bad state's attorney's advice.

"Carvalho knows better," said Quigley.

Indeed, it was Carvalho who publicly lectured the board at its second meeting this summer on the need for public notice and compliance with the Open Meetings act. It was also Carvalho to whom the Daily Herald put in a verbal request for the document on Sept. 26. Carvalho promised to get back to the reporter, but did not. Friday morning, he promised the document would be released after it was approved that morning. But Carvalho left shortly after the vote, and remaining administrators continued to claim "draft" privilege.

What prompted the secrecy on the budget wasn't clear, but Carvalho and other board members had publicly wrung their hands at the Sept. 26 meeting that the budget, which adds anywhere from $71 million to $103 million in expenditures and 400 jobs, would be a tough pill for county board members to swallow. The county board must still sign off on the hospitals system's budget.

When fellow hospitals board member David Ansell balked at the large number of new hires, he was told by Carvalho they were necessary because of arcane, county line-item budgeting rules, but promised many other unneeded jobs besides the 400 new ones would be eliminated during the year.

When Ansell still objected, Carvalho said it was "awkward" to discuss budgeting strategy in public, and then intimated that the jobs and their inclusion in the budget were somehow related to the negotiating Carvalho still needed to do with Dunnings, Stroger and the board of commissioners.

"Laying out (in public here) the whole strategy of how you're going to deal with them is a constraint," Carvalho pointedly told Ansell.

"Read between the lines," said Carvalho. "There's other parties to this than the 11 of us in this room."

"Yes, I'm not very strategic," quipped Ansell in response.

County Commissioner Forrest Claypool said the comments were troubling because they smacked of an indication of deal making between Ansell and Stroger's administration.

"The purpose of transferring governance (of the hospitals) to an independent board was not to make government more secretive, and it's important these decisions be made in the light of day and the taxpayers know what the independent board's (position) is," Claypool said.

Dunnings said she assumed the board's actions Friday were merely one of courtesy to both the president and commissioners who have to consider how to deal with a bigger hospitals request at a time when gas, cigarette and other tax receipts are declining with a bad economy.