Effort to exempt some from public records law advances

Legislation aimed at increasing the spectrum of public employee evaluations exempted from Freedom of Information Act requests cleared the state House Tuesday by a comfortable margin.

The House's 77-36 vote in support of the law, split mostly along party lines, was the first step toward overriding Gov. Pat Quinn's July veto of the legislation which would prohibit disclosure of public employees performance evaluations _ police officers, firefighters, city managers and county tax assessors among them. Just 71 votes _ a 3/5 majority _ were needed.

State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, an Aurora Democrat, filed the legislation last January, on the heels of the swift passage of a law requiring student growth to be tied to teacher and principal performance evaluations, with one caveat _ those evaluations would be exempted from FOIA requests.

Its passage came less than two weeks after a new law broadening the scope of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act went into effect.

The unions “were all at the table. They're going to ask for things. We didn't want to stop the legislation,” Chapa LaVia said then. “Negotiation is what it's all about.”

The trailer legislation broadening the exemptions passed both houses in April, but was ultimately vetoed by Quinn, who rewrote the law to exempt only state and local police officers' evaluations.

The Illinois Press Association is staunchly opposed to both pieces of legislation.

“The public has a right to know about the performance of employees that their tax dollars are paying for,” said Josh Sharp, the director of government relations for the Illinois Press Association.

This override would come just weeks after Quinn reached a controversial no-layoff through 2012 deal with public service employee union AFSME this fall.

The legislation now heads to the Senate, where another 3/5 majority vote to override Quinn's veto is needed.