A victory for reform: Freedom of Information Act improvements signed into law

The state law intended to guarantee Illinoisans access to government records got a much-needed overhaul today, when Gov. Patrick Quinn signed a bill strengthening the law’s enforcement provisions.

The Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, is supposed to ensure taxpayers have access to government records. But the law is too-often not followed or altogether ignored, preventing Illinoisans from gathering information about their governments’ work.

Numerous reform groups, including ICPR and the Illinois Reform Commission, worked with Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office this winter and spring to draft a rewrite of the existing FOIA. On Monday, Quinn signed into law the group’s work-product, Senate Bill 189.

The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2010, makes a number of critical improvements to FOIA and its partner, the Open Meetings Act. Among them:

- Shortens the amount of time public bodies have to respond to FOIA requests to five business days from the current seven-day allowance. The legislation also shortens the extension public bodies can grant themselves to five days from the current seven.

- Makes permanent the position of Public Access Counselor, or PAC, within the Attorney General’s office, and grants the counselor power to help resolve FOIA disputes. The PAC will have the power to issue both advisory and binding opinions as to whether requested records are public.

- Mandates that courts award attorneys’ fees to records-requestors who successfully sue for access to open records after illegally being denied access to them. The current law gives judges discretion to award attorneys' fees, which means that people who take their records requests to court -- and win -- might be left to foot their attorneys' bill.

- Requires designated government employees to complete annual FOIA and Open Meetings Act training to educate them about state law and help ensure compliance.

- Strengthens enforcement provisions by allowing courts to impose civil penalties for public bodies that intentionally disregard the law.

You can check out the text of the new law here.

Reform FOIA

Illinois' Freedom of Information Act was a huge leap forward when first adopted, but now is a forgotten relic, too often ignored by the very governments who are bound by its rules. ICPR made extensive use of FOIA last year with our first report on lobbying by units of local government [pdf]. Citing FOIA, we asked for records relating to lobbying. Most governments did comply, but many, too many, did not respond in accordance with the FOIA. What we got instead was:

* Many units of government took more than a month to respond. FOIA says they must respond with in 7 business days; that response may be to claim one extension, but they absolutely must respond within 14 business days. Large units of government, including the City of Chicago and Cook County, took far, far longer to get back to us.

* Many units charged excessive fees. FOIA allows units of government to charge actual copying costs -- that is, the cost of making copies, not the cost of gathering the information. For paper documents, a trip to the corner copy shop would suggest this is about 10 cents per page. We had units charging 25 cents per page, and the DuPage County Election Commission charged $1.00 per page.

* Many units of government refused to release documents. FOIA exempts from disclosure certain kinds of legal work. We found units of government that claimed that because their lobbyists were also lawyers, they did not have to tell us anything about their work or billings -- even though lobbying is not exempt legal work.

FOIA is supposed to be a floor, a minimum standard that all units of government must follow when taxpayers ask questions about what's being done in the name of the public. In practice, FOIA too often becomes an obstacle course, manipulated by public officials to discourage the public from asking questions.

We agree wholeheartedly with the State Journal-Register's editorial today that FOIA "needs reform -- now." The statute needs to be cleaned up and streamlined. And government agencies need to be reminded of their duties under FOIA, which are, after all, merely what government owes to its owners.