Illinois AG's office sees the fewest public access help requests in a decade

The number of requests for help from the Illinois attorney general's public access bureau dropped last year to its lowest point in a decade.

From 2013 to 2022, the public access counselor received an average of about 3,500 requests annually from citizens and media outlets whose efforts to get information were denied by various government agencies throughout the state. The office was also asked to look into an average of more than 360 accusations of Open Meetings Act violations each year.

Last year, the office reviewed 3,024 requests for public information that were denied and 342 Open Meetings Act violation complaints.

A spokeswoman for Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said the public access bureau began offering webinars to public officials about complying with Freedom of Information Act requests and the state's Open Meetings Act "with the goal of reducing the likelihood of violations before they occur."

"Those have been quite popular, and collectively since September 2020, we have had several thousand attendees," said Raoul spokeswoman Jamey Dunn-Thomason.

Meanwhile, legal experts and government transparency advocates applaud the work of the PAC bureau, but they believe the office could do more to ensure timely and easy access to public information.

"The bones are there, but there's a lot that needs to be updated and optimized," said Jack Bentley, executive director of the Citizen Advocacy Center in Elmhurst. "I'd start by increasing the budget and increasing the staff, because the biggest roadblock our constituents find to be concerning is the timeline and how long it takes to process these requests."

The PAC bureau is a staff of roughly a dozen lawyers and another half dozen or so in support roles. Bentley believes more bodies are needed for the office to handle the workload in a timelier fashion.

One of the common complaints about the PAC office is that decisions can take months and often end in nonbinding decisions that government agencies can ignore without fear of a penalty.

Over the past decade, the bureau has issued an average of 15 binding opinions each year. That means that less than half of 1% of all complaints received by the PAC result in a decision that is enforceable in court.

"A binding opinion is valuable in two ways, because it sends a message and usually results in getting a faster response for your particular issue, but it also creates valuable precedent going forward," said Elizabeth Payne, legal director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, which received a binding opinion for one of its requests for review from the PAC in 2022 when a suburban police department denied a request for records it sought. "One of the things needed is more enforcement power by the PAC."

And while the PAC bureau maintains a website of all its binding opinions at foiapac.ilag.gov, it does not catalog the myriad nonbinding determinations made by the office each year.

"That's an easy fix for them, and it might help reduce the number of denials and requests for review," Bentley suggested.

The PAC office issued 14 binding opinions in 2022, eight related to FOIA and six regarding open meeting issues, according to the bureau's annual report.

Don Craven, a Springfield attorney and president of the Illinois Press Association, said there are multiple reasons the PAC is seeing fewer requests for help these days. For one, commercial requesters are no longer able to use the bureau's services.

"And every once in a while people just get tired and don't pursue things like they might have used to," he said.

Illinois is home to more than 7,000 units of government, which requires that more than 7,000 public employees be trained on how to handle Freedom of Information Act requests and understand how to comply with the state's Open Meetings Act as well, another role the PAC bureau undertakes. But that also means you have that many possible individual interpretations of the state's public records law.

"Whether that's by design or an accident of history, the more layers of government there are, the more difficult it is to wade through," Bentley said. "And the PAC has an obligation to take on those challenges."

Despite its shortcomings, legal experts and transparency advocates remain grateful for the bureau's existence, something citizens in several other states don't enjoy.

"I'm so glad it exists," Payne said. "It's essential."