Stop forcing people to battle their own government for access to public records

SHARE Stop forcing people to battle their own government for access to public records
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Attorney General of the State of Illinois Lisa Madigan. | Maria Cardona/ Sun-Times

Americans are so busy fighting each other they fail to recognize they could work together to change their government.

When it comes to getting access to public information, we should all be on the same side. In fact, we are, but it’s the losing side.

The Chicago Sun-Times on Monday printed a critical story by ProPublica about this state’s public access counselor. That’s a lawyer who works for the Illinois Attorney General and is supposed to be the person who fights for the average person when government officials refuse to disclose public information.

OPINION

Let me disclose some personal involvement here. I claim credit for helping convince Lisa Madigan that the creation of the public access counselor’s office was worth doing. Madigan didn’t need a lot of convincing. As a candidate for attorney general, it was something she wanted to do.

And she deserves a lot more credit than she has gotten for following through on that pledge.

None of her predecessors were willing to create the office. That’s because their fellow politicians enjoyed a system where private citizens were pitted against massive government bureaucracies that had millions of dollars in tax money to hire lawyers and stonewall any request for public documents.

Madigan helped pass a rewrite of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, plugging loopholes in the old law and creating the office of public access counselor in 2009.

Cara Smith, the state’s first public access counselor after the law was passed, said it is the most difficult job she has ever had and that includes a couple of years running Cook County Jail for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. That’s because government officials across the state hated the law.

Terry Mutchler, an attorney and former journalist, was actually appointed to the post of public access counselor by Madigan before the law was even passed.

“The real problem right now is that government agencies are gaming the system,” Mutchler said. “The public access counselor is being inundated by b.s. cases that, on their surface, should have been resolved immediately in favor of the public.

“Either overtly or covertly, local and state agencies in Illinois have conspired to deny so many requests for access to public documents that the public access counselor’s office can’t possibly deal with them all in a timely manner.”

Mutchler, who now runs a Pennsylvania-based law firm that deals exclusively with freedom of information cases, believes the next governor of Illinois needs to take more responsibility for government transparency in state agencies.  No state agency should be allowed to deny a freedom of information request without the approval of his office, she said, to send a clear message that the people in Illinois are entitled to public information.

Mutchler acknowledged that would not affect the thousands of local government agencies in Illinois that routinely refuse to disclose information.

The City of Chicago is one of the biggest offenders in that regard.

“But for all those people who believe we are someday going to have true transparency in government,” Mutchler said, “let me take you to the last page of the novel. We are not!”

Government agencies and government lobbyists have once more undermined the Freedom of Information Act by demanding exemptions.

The office of public access counselor, while under constant attack from government officials who want to keep you in the dark, has answered the call for tens of thousands of citizens who had no one to turn to before the law was passed.

This state’s public records law was once ranked the worst in the nation. It is much better today.

Madigan created an office, still in its infancy, to help citizens battle their own government. It needs nurturing, improvement, public oversight and staunch public allies or it will be made impotent.

Government officials are determined to keep you in the dark. We need the office of public access counselor to stop them.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com

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