A relentless battle for the most basic candidate information

Hey, I said, we should cover the installation of Joe Birkett as a justice of the Illinois Appellate Court's Second District in Elgin next week.

Not so fast, Daily Herald.

Seems that the swearing in of appellate justices is a top-secret affair, closed to the media, a court spokesman told Josh Stockinger, our legal affairs reporter.

However, the spokesman said, we were free to cover a faux swearing in of Birkett, soon to be DuPage County's former state's attorney, which may be held the day after the real swearing in, at the courthouse in Wheaton.

Those thwarted efforts pale in comparison to the hoops we had to jump through to get the most basic of information about candidates who will be filing next week for the Oak Brook village board.

You'll recall I broached this topic in last week's column, gently and somewhat tongue-in-cheekishly asking our candidates to cough up their e-mail addresses so we can send them our candidate questionnaires, which we hope they'll answer and we'll post online and in print one of several ways we help voters make an informed decision on who to vote for in April.

So, for the past week, our reporters, editors and other staffers have been contacting local officials to make this happen. In many instances this has gone as smooth as silk.

But the back-and-forth with the village of Oak Brook that Stockinger chronicles in today's editions borders on the ridiculous. There, a top administrator told Stockinger the FOIA law forbade him from releasing any information beyond the candidates' names. That prompted us to check in with the Illinois Attorney General's Office, which didn't mince words. “Petitions are inherently public documents not subject to any exemptions under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act),” a spokesman said. We played that back to Oak Brook, and now it looks like we'll get the info.

Also, some governments are asking/requiring us to provide a form they can show the candidates, so it will be clear, as the village of Bloomingdale put it, candidates are not obligated to provide their contact information.

As weird as it might sound, we actually have come across candidates virtually every election who wish to run their campaign for public office in privacy.

So, fine, I composed a letter for the candidates and the people collecting their petitions. I instructed my staff to tailor as they saw fit, but here's the template:

Dear candidate,

Congratulations on your decision to run for public office. As the main suburban newspaper in DuPage County, the Daily Herald for years has asked candidates for local office to fill out questionnaires giving their views on the office they seek. As in the past, we intend to publish candidates' responses to help residents make informed choices in the April election.

To that end, we are requesting the following information so we can contact you with the questionnaire, for endorsement interviews and news stories that we may write during the course of the campaign. Most of this information already is required on the petitions of candidacy you file.

Name:

Office sought:

Address:

Phone number:

E-mail address:

The e-mail address is especially important, as it is the means by which we will get you the candidate questionnaire. We are asking the administrators of the office you are seeking to forward the information to us. We will not publish any of the contact information you provide.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Jim Davis

DuPage editor

jdavis@dailyherald.com