The importance of openness
As Illinoisans, we should celebrate a milestone birthday this year. July 1 marks the 40th anniversary of the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
Congress spent about 12 years debating whether and how to implement a federal statute, and it would be another 17 years before Illinois agreed to adopt its own law, which hews closely to the country’s.
Despite considering ourselves a nation of the people, by the people and for the people, the default up until 1967 was to keep the workings of government under wraps. That seemed incongruous with the nature of our republic.
The federal FOIA, rather than leaving to courts in many cases to determine whether information should be released, made it the default to provide open access to information, with specific exceptions.
Illinois’ FOIA grants anyone the right to copy and inspect public records for public bodies of Illinois, whether they be reports, forms, letters, memorandums, books, papers, maps, photos, recordings or data used held by or used by those bodies.
Among the exceptions are information that is considered an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, such as personnel and medical records; contract negotiations; trade secrets; and information related to police work that could imperil a person’s life, privacy or right to a fair trial.
That’s the law. It should be that simple.
Oftentimes it’s not. And that’s because some public bodies will go to great lengths to avoid disclosing much of anything.
Case in point: Our Russell Lissau on Tuesday wrote about a FOIA request he made in May 2019 regarding Wauconda Unit District 118’s financial settlement with a family. He asked about it and was told it was a closed-session matter because it involved student confidentiality.
But because there was a financial settlement, “That wasn't good enough,” Lissau explained. “People have a right to know how their tax dollars are being spent.”
So he filed a FOIA request for the settlement agreement and got back a heavily redacted document that left us wondering even why a settlement was reached. Our interest was not in the identity of the student ― and we said so up front ― but why taxpayer money was being spent. After appealing to the school district and getting nowhere, Lissau appealed to the Illinois Attorney General’s office.
Fast forward four and a half years to last month, and the Attorney General found in Lissau’s favor, saying the pubic has a right to know how its money is being spent and can disclose that without violating the student’s privacy. Two weeks later, Lissau received a less redacted document that explained the situation.
The Attorney General’s office reports that its Public Access Counselor is asked to review 3,00 to 4,000 cases annually.
The best reporters understand and use the FOIA routinely. Most of the time, we are given the information we request. Sometimes we are reminded that for much of our nation’s and state’s past we ― news gatherers and the general public ― were nearly powerless to have access to many of the documents that taxing bodies use to make decisions affecting our lives.
It’s important to exercise those rights if we are to keep them.