Palatine tea party shifts to local politics

Whether they're lining the streets waving colorful placards or making impassioned speeches, members of the Palatine tea party are old pros when it comes to community rallies.

But the focus of the relatively new group's efforts has always been on the big picture, be it the federal health care bill, the role of government or support for conservative candidates in the state and nationwide.

Now that the November election has passed — and new Republican Congressman Joe Walsh is providing local tea party activists a voice in Washington, D.C. — the organization has set its sights closer to home.

“We're taking a more active role in what happens in our back yard,” Palatine tea party coordinator Craig Mijares said.

That includes a growing presence of tea partyers as candidates for school and municipal boards in the April elections.

And Mijares is on a mission to make sure every local government's expenditures, from salaries and benefits to union contracts, are just a mouse click away.

Joined by Walsh, Republican state Sen. Dan Duffy of Lake Barrington and former Republican governor candidate Adam Andrzejewski, Mijares spoke Saturday to members of the 912 Patriots of Lake County, another conservative grass-roots organization, about the importance of government transparency.

“We really concentrated on getting Walsh elected, and now we want to focus on transparency and informing people,” said Tom Weber, organizer of the Lake County group. “If citizens knew about all the bonuses and perks elected officials were approving, they might be protesting in the streets.”

The endeavor begins with Mijares' hometown, the village of Palatine.

Taking a cue from the Illinois Policy Institute's Local Transparency Project, Mijares has begun posting on teapartypalatine.com financial documents from 2009, including the W2 forms for all 423 village employees, the village's general ledger and his own analysis of the village manager's compensation.

He's come up with sample Freedom of Information Act requests for others to follow, and said other municipalities — and possibly park districts, school districts and other bodies — will be hearing from the group in the future.

After sending more than a dozen of his own FOIA requests to Palatine, Mijares is upset not only with the spending he's seeing, but what he calls resistance by the village to provide public information.

It started with a FOIA request in August for employees' salary information and benefits, which typically make up about 80 percent of the village's budget. He expected a breakdown like the one Hoffman Estates posts on its website, which provides names, titles and detailed earnings down to an employee's uniform allowance, health insurance and pension benefits.

What Mijares got from Palatine was a treasurer's report that listed village employees in groups based on salary ranges, such as $75,000 to $99,999.

“What I saw was vague at best,” Mijares said.

Palatine officials say they don't have the kind of document Mijares asked for, and FOIA laws don't require a government body to create a new document based on a request.

“That's the closest document we have based on his (Mijares') request,” Village Manager Reid Ottesen. “We comply with any and all requests according to state statute, and it's reviewed by the village attorney.”

The Medicare wages and tips box on W2 forms were redacted, for example, due to deductions being an employee's private choice, Ottesen said. Ottesen also pointed out that the Illinois Policy Institute's second audit of Palatine's transparency scored the village just one point below Hoffman Estates.

Since then, Mijares has been trying to piece together his own Palatine version of what Hoffman Estates makes public. He's had to calculate some items on his own, so it can only be so accurate, he said.

Roman Golash, a tea partyer running for Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211, said he was motivated to run partly because he shared his fiscal concerns with that board and the Palatine village council, only for both panels to put blame on other public bodies.

“They all seem to think they're doing just fine, that it's the other guy,” Golash said. “The tea party is noticing that all these little tax increases at the local level are destroying the fabric of our society in terms of slowly eroding our ability to live.”

Weber, from the 912 Patriots of Lake County, said several of the group's members are candidates in this spring's elections.

Mijares made a rocky appearance at a Palatine village council meeting in December, when he criticized tax increases in the village's 2011 budget.

Village officials responded by accusing Mijares of grandstanding, noting that he raised his concerns only on the night of the council's vote, not during several earlier budget workshop sessions. Officials detailed “painstaking measures” they took to minimize the burden on taxpayers.

The encounter prompted Palatine Mayor Jim Schwantz to sit down with Mijares last week to discuss village services and transparency efforts.

“I explained that from a new website to new ways of collecting information, we're a work in progress,” Schwantz said. “We're aware of what he's trying to do, and we've provided him with what we have.”