Lawmakers seek to limit access to information

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Your elected officials sure don’t want you to have access to information.

The Legislature has been chopping away at the new Illinois Freedom of Information Act since it was passed two years ago.

The latest move is aimed at “vexatious requesters,” individuals who annoy municipal officials by repeatedly asking for public documents.

Why would people do such a thing?

Maybe because their government fails to put these documents online, where they would be easily available for viewing by the general public.

Government officials contend that these people are either crazy, obsessed or anarchists.

The “vexatious requester” proposal has been rewritten and is now called the “recurrent requester” provision and is part of a measure that would change three portions of the freedom of information law.

To qualify as a “recurrent requester,” a person in a 12-month period must have submitted to the same public body a minimum of 50 requests for records, or at least 15 requests within a 30-day period or a minimum of seven requests within seven days. The news media and nonprofit, scientific or academic organizations are exempt from the provision.

Emily Miller, policy and government affairs coordinator for the Better Government Association, explained why her organization opposed the measure.

“If someone files seven requests for information in one week, they are labeled a recurrent requester for a year and would have to wait longer for a response, while a person who realizes you can bundle all seven requests into one FOI request will not be classified as a recurrent requester,” Miller said.

“You can actually ask for an unlimited number of documents in one request and not be deemed a recurrent requester, but the average person isn’t going to know that so we think it is unfair.

“In addition, people are entitled to government information just like they’re entitled to fire and police protection,” Miller continued.
“Municipalities should do whatever they have to do to comply with the law.

“Finally, we haven’t seen any evidence that recurrent requesters have become so troublesome the law needs to be changed. There is no documentation that this is really a problem rather than someone just saying, ‘We’re going to change the law.’”

Another change in the FOI law would address commercial requests for information from government agencies. Under the proposal, such agencies could charge commercial interests more than private individuals for finding and copying public documents.

The first eight hours of research would be free of charge, but the limits of the costs beyond that seem rather open-ended. All government costs, however, would have to be documented.

Finally, and this may be the most important change, the Illinois attorney general’s office will no longer have to pre-approve every decision by a government agency that plans to refuse a freedom of information request.

The non-binding process requires public bodies, in every instance, to ask the attorney general’s public access counselor for authorization to use commonly cited exemptions to the law.

According to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, in 2010 alone, 62 percent of the public access counselor’s work involved reviewing pre-authorization matters, “which have no enforcement mechanism.”

So even if the public access counselor said, “you can’t deny the public these documents,” the government agency could just ignore the non-binding opinion and refuse to release information.

There have been a lot of complaints about the public access counselor’s office being too slow in responding to complaints about government refusing to comply with the FOI law.

I championed the creation of the office because I hoped it would act as an attorney for the people in disputes over the open meetings and FOI laws.

Government agencies, using your tax money, have always been quick to challenge private citizens who go to court to challenge their decisions. I thought the people needed their own government attorney to fight back.

Madigan understood the need, but her public access counselor’s office has failed to issue binding opinions in many cases and has been slow to review complaints about government agencies. If this change in the law speeds up that process, I’m all for it.

I also believe public access attorneys need to be accessible to the general public, which they have not been in recent months.

The fact that the Legislature was scheduled to rewrite the FOI law Tuesday night at the conclusion of its regular business is more than symbolic.

Altering a sunshine law in the dark illustrates what political leaders think of the public’s right to know.