Kane County needs to be more transparent
Last April Kane County announced that an independent review of its Web site found it "sorely lacking in information about county contracts, lobbying activity and ready access to public records." Transparency is now the prime goal for evolving the Web site, wrote Daily Herald reporter James Fuller in "Kane County looking to Web to reach public" on April 22.
A newly formed ad hoc committee met for the first time on Aug. 3 to tackle the lofty job of examining the existing Web site. The project is funded with a $65,000 casino grant with a startup committee consisting of county staff, a county board member and interested residents and groups.
While at first glance it appears to be a boatload of spin, taxpayers can grade it themselves after the task force has finished hashing it out over the next few months.
So where does transparency fit in? The question for stimulus fund-watchers is where to access the latest $76,414,911 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act program details Kane is to get. But don't count on seeing any project info on the Web site. The task force, unapologetically revisiting this issue from past years, purports that because of financial constraints adding things like information on the Recovery Act might not work.
It doesn't work for Illinois, either. A recent 50-state study by a Washington, D.C. watchdog group determined that Illinois' official stimulus site garnered a zero. So much for user-friendly sites allowing easy access to information on names of contractors, dollar amounts of winning contracts and how individual projects are meeting the job-creation numbers whether at the state, county, or city levels.
Here is the suggestion from Kane County development department point man Mark VanKerkhoff taken from the same news story: When it comes to how federal funds will be distributed, visit the federal government's recovery.org site. He says it does a much better job explaining how the funds will be used.
No funds for a county webmaster, millions in county recovery act programs with no accountability. Hey, Kane County, any excuse not to provide transparency is irrefutably unacceptable.
D.L. Bakk
Village of Campton Hills