 Gov. Pat Quinn on Monday used an amendatory veto on a piece of
legislation that would have kept all but the most basic of
information in locked files.
House Bill 5154 aimed to exempt employee evaluations and other
information in a public worker's file from freedom of information
requests.Quinn said only police officers should get the new
exemption. Public school teachers, principals and school
superintendents received a similar exemption in different
legislation earlier this year.
The governor said there is a public safety need to keep some
private information about cops private.
"These evaluations could be used by criminal suspects or
defendants to undermine a police investigation or attack the
credibility and integrity of a police officer," Quinn wrote in his
veto message to lawmakers.
Reaction to that decision was strong, but mixed.
Melissa Hahn, president of the Illinois News Broadcasters
Association, praised Quinn for protecting Illinois' newly expanded
Freedom of Information Act.
Hahn said that with one governor in jail and another facing
possible jail time, Illinois needs another set of eyes on government
at all levels.
"These folks are being paid by taxpayer dollars to function for
the good of the public. And the public should really know if that's
happening," she said.
Don Craven, with the Illinois Press Association, agreed that some
information is better than nothing. But he adds that without full
records on all public workers, the new law is "half a loaf."
"There are still a significant number of public employees whose
evaluations are prohibited from disclosure -- school
superintendents, police officers, teachers, principals," he said.
The move to place information about teachers, principals and
school superintendents off-limits came as part of a compromise in
Illinois' hunt for Race to the Top federal education grant dollars.
The state got a provision to tie teacher pay to performance.
Teachers got an exemption to keep proof of that performance out of
the public eye.
Unions for thousands of other state and local government workers
now want the same. AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall said there is too
much that could be lost or misused if workers are not protected.
"It's common-sense legislation the preserves the personal privacy
of public service workers and the confidentiality of their personnel
files," he said.
But the information in those personnel files has been public
since the first of the year, and both Hahn and Craven point out that
not many people have asked to see them.
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"We're not trying to snoop into anybody's private grocery lists.
We're trying to make sure that the people who are being paid to do
public service are indeed doing public service," Craven said.
Hahn added that most of the requests to the Illinois attorney
general's office under the new freedom of information law have been
related to specific issues.
"Requests for personnel evaluations rarely happen. And it happens
for a reason -- usually tied to corruption and allegations of
mistreatment of employees. And that's what we've found in Illinois,"
the Illinois News Broadcasters Association president said.
AFSCME's Lindall said his union supports whistle-blowers and is
always trying to protect workers from inner-office mistreatment. But
he said his fear is the same as Quinn's: how that information would
be used outside of a government office.
"(Quinn's veto message) says nothing about prison workers who
have, frankly, more contact with dangerous criminals than police
officers do. He said nothing about child protective workers who go
into very dangerous situations and do very sensitive work about
protecting kids from abuse and neglect," Lindall said.
He said AFSCME will push for lawmakers to override the governor's
veto during this fall's legislative session. The proposed law fell
one vote short of the three-fifths majority needed to carry that
override in the Illinois House.
Hahn and Craven hope lawmakers listen to Quinn's message and
don't continue to nibble away at the state's new freedom of
information law.
[Illinois
Statehouse News; By BENJAMIN YOUNT]
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