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 At least one piece of legislation in the General Assembly would chip
away at the state's recently rewritten Freedom of Information Act,
while another would change the long-standing way governments
announce how they're spending their money.
Senate Bill 2203 would give governmental bodies a longer period to
respond to FOIA requests and allow them to charge more money to
produce the requested documents. Currently governments in Illinois
have five days to respond to a request. The new legislation would
double that. Also, under the current law any petitioner can get the
first 50 pages of a request for free, unless there is a statutory
fee already in place. The new plan would eliminate that. "It would be even, in our opinion, worse than the previous law was.
We're opposed to it, and we'd like to see some major changes to it,"
Josh Sharp, director of governmental relations for the Illinois
Press Association.
In addition to lobbying on behalf of the media, the IPA also
advocates for open government.
State Sen. Pamela Althoff, R-Crystal Lake, is sponsoring the bill
and said concerns about the cost of the FOIA to local taxing bodies
is what triggered the legislation.
"There are many stakeholders. I would say it's not just local
government, it's park districts, it's the school alliances. I think
they were concerned about how they could meet many of what they
considered to be mandates of the original legislation," she said.
The thinking goes that with government on all levels hurting for
money, having employees take time to make copies and handle FOIA
requests is a drain on resources.
Althoff said the plan is to take the ideas in the legislation and
combine them with the other FOIA changes in an omnibus bill.
But good ideas can lose something in the transition to reality,
Sharp said.
"You give local government an inch, they're going to take a mile in
terms of dealing with document requests and secrecy issues and
things like that," he said. "We really try to narrowly focus our
exemptions so they're not abused."
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The IPA and others also are critical of a measure that would change
how taxing bodies make announcements about the use of public
property or tax dollars. Those governmental entities currently have
to buy advertisements in local publications.
House Bill 1869 would let those announcements be made on the
Internet. Advertisements in newspapers wouldn't stop running
completely. Under the measure, governments would have to let people
know that the announcement was available on the Internet.
Opponents to the measure say governments are using the pretext of
accessibility as a way to save money, while at the same time hurting
open government.
Not so, said state Rep. Michael Tryon, R-Crystal Lake, co-sponsor of
the legislation.
Tryon used the example of his home county of McHenry. At least 92
percent of the residents there have access to the Internet, while at
the same time only 25 percent subscribe to a newspaper, he said.
"It is about the cost, but it is also about getting information to
people in the way that people want to receive information," Tryon
said.
[Illinois
Statehouse News; By ANDREW THOMASON]
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