The wait is over. On Friday last week, Governor Pat Quinn signed into law HB 1716, a bill that will restrict FOIA requests in Illinois. It is unfortunate that the governor chose to support a bill that clearly robs the public of their right to know about their government.

Earlier , we wrote about Illinois’ consideration of the bill and highlighted our efforts to encourage open government through our open letter and call tool campaign which prompted some positive changes in Maine  and Utah .

By choosing to punish so-called ‘recurrent requesters’ -- as this law surely will -- by delaying their requests, the governor is not only disappointing the open government advocates who thought of him as a “sunshine” sympathizer, but is also confirming the state’s reputation of going back on transparency promises. Indeed, an audit done in 2006 by the Better Government Association showed that an overwhelming 62 percent of Illinois’ government did not comply with Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, while a miserly 38 percent of public bodies were fully or substantially compliant.

Just like on the Federal level, lobbyists at state are equally if not more involvement in government legislature.

Last week, an article about Illinois’ local government use of lobbyists to fight transparency  using the public’s tax money discussed how lawmakers who usually start out as local government officials hate dealing with FOI. It goes without saying that any FOI-supporting legislation will be killed at inception by the legislators who didn’t like it in the first place (even when they had less power to do anything about it).

So it looks like FOI abuses such as the 2009 case of a taxpayer who crusaded for three and a half years and was denied information on the then-superintendent's employment contract will be the only saving grace for the state. The abuse later prompted a law reform, after the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the superintendent's records were not exempted from FOIA.

But should Illinoisans and the rest of the public wait for other glaring abuses to rear their ugly heads before Freedom of Information is taken seriously? At Sunlight, we will continue to demonstrate our support for transparency -- even as our leaders bail on us, we still can hold them accountable and prove that though they may think this particular battle is won, the fight still goes on.

The fourth president of the United States, James Madison once wrote:

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Last month, we wrote about how the state of Illinois was erecting barriers to such knowledge by passing House Bill 1716. Sponsored by both House and Senate representatives, HB 1716 is an amendment bill to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which will require people who request information to pay for the actual cost of retrieving public records.

Several watchdog groups, including For the Good of Illinois , are concerned that the bill labels citizens who request information more than 50 times a year as “recurrent requestors”. This label jeopardizes their chances of actually getting the information they request, because once someone has been labeled, the government may delay fulfilling the request for up to one year!

The Citizen Advocacy Center (CAC), another vocal transparency organization in Illinois, has rallied Illinoisans asked Governor Quinn to reject HB 1716. Last week, the group met with the Governor’s legislative staff last week to express their concern about the bill. CAC has a history of fighting for the freedom of popular information: in 2009, CAC worked with the Attorney General’s Office to reform Illinois' FOIA -- turning it from one of the country’s worst FOI laws into one of the strongest.

CAC is joined in the struggle against HB 1716 by the Better Government Association, which created a take action platform calling on citizens to tell the Governor to stop the FOIA roll back bill.

The organization’s president and CEO, Andy Shaw, also wrote an open letter to the Governor that was published in the Chicago Sun Times -- reminding the Governor of his vow to keep Illinois “more transparent, accountable and accessible to the people”.

Proponents of HB 1716, including the state’s Attorney General Lisa Madigan, praise it for having a provision that lifts the pre-authorization requirement. At the moment, this requirement is needed for agencies to deny requests. But transparency supporters fear that the bill will greatly affect freelance journalists and watchdog groups by delaying their FOIA requests (especially if they are identified as “recurrent requestors”).

According to Maryam Judar of CAC, the Governor has until August 26th to either veto, amendatorily veto, or sign the bill. As we wait to hear the fate of Illinois’ FOIA, we continue to emphasize the importance of having an open and transparent state government. Our Open Letter call tool is available to help not only Illinoisans but all citizens to demand greater respect for transparency laws from their governors. By doing so, we become our own governors by arming ourselves with the power that knowledge provides -- just as Madison envisioned.

Earlier this month, Ohio Governor John Kasich, signed into law a bill that will greatly reduce the penalties for unlawful destruction of public records. Sandwiched in the budget amendment bill, and likened to SB 178, the bill sets a $10,000 limit per case in fines that a given agency can pay for destroying public records.

Before the amendment, the state’s Public Records Act prohibited anyone from removing, destroying or mutilating all records because they were the property of the Public Office ( Sec. 149.351.)

The implications of this bill are two fold:

1. Agencies now have leeway to burn or shred public records that they consider either controversial or unfit for the public to see. As long as they can pay the $10,000 fine, then they are good to go.

2. While advocates for this bill believe that it will stop people requesting documents they do not need (especially after they have been destroyed) only to turn around and sue for large amounts of money, opponents feel that the $10,000 cap on lawyers fees will prevent most Ohioans from suing agencies that destroy public records. Several transparency supporters, including newspaper publishers and environmentalists, believe that this is a direct attack on open government.

The Ohio newspaper Association, Ohio Environmental Council, Ohio Association for Justice and the Ohio Employment Lawyers have all signed a joint testimony calling on the Governor to remove the amendment to the Public Records Act from the budget bill. (See joint testimony at the bottom.)

Ohioans are also showing their displeasure in the study: A Quinnipiac University poll released this week shows that 50% of registered voters disapprove of the way the governor is conducting his work.

Ohioans and others dissatisfied with their governor’s commitment to transparency legislation (or, at the very least, their commitment to not signing into law legislation that will directly inhibit transparency) can take action against these kinds of transparency rollbacks. Our campaign to tell our governors not to roll back on transparency now has a tool that makes it easy for you to call your governor’s office and tell them that open government issues -- like public records laws, financial disclosure, and open data -- are important to you. If you don’t tell your elected officials that these issues matter, then anti-transparency measures like Governor Kaisch’s signing of SB 178 will be norm.

Make the call and let us know how it went. By continuing to track our governors’ actions, we ensure that their campaign promises of being transparent are not just promises, but actions they can be accountable for.

P.S. For those of you following our trip to Utah to visit the National Governors Association (NGA), we should note that Governor Kaisch recently opted out of the NGA because he did not feel like it was “worth the amount of money to be [a] member.”

Look for more coverage of our trip this week!

Ohio Public Records HB153 Testimony

Several months ago, we noticed a trend in states rolling back transparency legislation. Disturbed, we put up a campaign to call attention to it. In the months since then, here's an update:

In Utah, Governor Gary Herbert made a call to repeal and replace HB477 and a working group comprising of journalists, the public and representatives from the governor's office met to offer recommendations basing on 36 policy questions. The recommendations are currently being reviewed by the governor's office. Meanwhile, in Maine, Governor Paul Lepage put on hold his plans to establish a business advisory council whose activities would be exempt from the state's Freedom of Access Act.

But Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker went back on his promise of not keeping the public in the dark about their government.

AND we started learning about problems that were even more widespread. Fresh on the transparency rollback list are Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Montana and Washington State. This reinforces our desire to see even more transparency from our governors.

This week, we'll be delivering the "Tell your governor to support open government" letter with your signatures to the National Governors Association to make sure every governor knows that transparency isn't just a campaign promise -- it's fundamental to a healthy democracy.

The National Governors Association (NGA) will be holding their 103rd annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah - July 15th through 17th. According to their website, the state leaders will be meeting to discuss education, innovation and competitiveness. Here at Sunlight, we would like to take the same opportunity to address an equally important issue - open government. A call to the NGA’s Communications office to see if I can be given access to the agenda of the meeting, revealed that it was not available for the public “because their meetings are private” -- unless if you are an attendee or a governor. So as you and I are neither, we will just have to wait and hope that the agenda will be made public AFTER the meeting.

It is ironic that this year’s venue for the NGA meeting is Utah. Not so long ago, the state’s governor, Gary Herbert, passed HB477 - a controversial law that altered treasured public access legislation, restricting access to records about the state senate, imposed punitive fees and created waiting periods for anyone requesting information. In March 2011, after learning about this bill and noting a trend of similar transparency rollbacks around the country, we decided to launch the Open Letter to Governors campaign. Although we emphasized activity in Utah , Maine, Tenneesse, Florida and Wisconsin, we framed our letter with a message to all governors, from all citizens: Transparency is not a campaign promise.

Today, we explore how these open government issues have played out in the states we highlighted earlier and what new issues have cropped up from governors’ offices in other states.

Colorado:

All call records made by Governor John Hickenlooper on his cell phone, including those concerning his office, are exempted from disclosure under the state’s public records laws. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press wrote that this could become a disturbing trend as other public officials may start making public calls while using their private cell phones.

Florida:

Contradicting his earlier efforts to make Florida government more open and transparent, Governor Rick Scott signed an executive order that now imposes a fee for public records. This move contrasts with the former governors’ policy (who explicitly did not charge for public records), slows down the process for receiving information, and restricts how much the public gets to know.

Illinois:

A bill that would drastically change the way government responds to public records requests, is being considered by Governor Pat Quinn. Sponsored by Don Harmon, HB1716 will amend the Freedom of Information Act by authorizing charges to people requesting records for the actual cost of retrieving and transporting said records from an off-site storage facility. The bill will also affect citizen watchdogs, individuals and free lance journalists by delaying responses to their requests. It has already been approved by both the Illinois House and Senate and Governor Quinn has 60 days to review it.

Louisiana:

Louisiana Senate rejected a bill that would have opened up more of the public records from Governor Bobby Jindal’s office. In 2009, the governor created a “deliberative process” exemption to prevent the public from accessing the state’s budgetary records under the guise of maintaining his ability to get “candid advice” on financial issues. Now, the governor is using deliberative processes to bar the public from seeing information between him and his staff including his emails and phone records.

Montana:

Unfazed by the U. S. Public Interest Research Groups report that gave Montana an F for state transparency, Governor Brian Schweitzer vetoed a bill that would have created a website with information on the state’s budget and spending. The governor, who claimed that state legislators are already publishing the same information on their individual websites, added that the cost of creating new sites could not be covered by the state.

Tennessee:

Governor Bill Haslam, who has repeatedly stated how important it is to let the public know where a public official’s income is coming from, continues to not disclose how much he is earning in outside income. The governor, who threw out outside income disclosure requirements through an executive order he signed early this year, also made sure that his top aides were exempted from disclosing their outside income. The governor has also made unprecedented delays in responding to public records requests made by the Associated Press - and when he did fulfill the requests, the documents he sent did not contain the information the AP asked for.

Washington State:

Thanks to a recent superior court ruling, Governor Chris Gregoire is now above the state’s Public Records Act. The Freedom Foundation, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, filed a lawsuit against the governor after discovering that she had been using her executive privilege to shield emails, memos, and other documents to other agencies that had been legally requested. The governor won her case by arguing that is would be a violation of the separation of powers doctrine for the courts to tell the governor how to disclose public records.

Wisconsin:

He may have made a show of trying to back up his public statement with public records, but Governor Scott Walker demonstrates that he can still roll back on transparency with the best of them. Earlier this year, the governor passed a controversial bill after midnight, robbing the public the right to see what was going on. Soon after, the governor passed another bill in the dead of the night after he vowed that his first midnight passage would be his last - again stripping the public of a chance to see how their government operates.

What is happening in your state? How is your governor responding to open government issues? We encourage you to take active participation in the way you are being governed and ask for openness from your leaders. Share your stories in the comments.

Is there a trend against transparency in the States? Because recent news from Utah, Maine, and Tennessee sure makes it look that way.

Politicians have learned to run on transparency. But promises to be more open are worthless if they're followed by the opposite. ("Government as a platform" isn't supposed to mean "something you say to get elected").

Governor Hebert of Utah is restricting access to records under the banner of open government. Maine's Governor LePage has decided that his business advisory committee will work better if open government laws don't apply to it. And Tennessee Governor Haslam decided that it was more comfortable to exempt himself from financial disclosure laws than it would have been to publicly disclose his finances.

Is this a trend? What's happening in your state?

We're reading about stunning disrespect for the role disclosure plays in democracy, coming from Tennessee's Governor, who has apparently just exempted himself and his staff from disclosing the amounts of their income.

This shows an astonishing lack of knowledge and respect for one of the primary instruments of accountability in government.

Disclosing personal finances lies at the heart of a functional democracy.  And if you doubt that, ask anyone trying to deal with the governments in Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or Russia.

Getting public officials to abstain from accepting gifts, or to disclose their finances is so important that dissidents and reformers around the world risk their lives trying to impose these relatively simple disclosures. If the public won't find out where officials' money is coming from (in detail!), the temptation to accept bribes or self-deal will win out far too often.

In the disclosure forms where Governor Haslam apparently sees only political inconvenience, and the awkwardness of disclosing apparently vast personal wealth, we see the most basic kind of public trust.

By disclosing details of one's personal finances, public officials are saying "my official work is untainted by my personal interests, and if you doubt that, you can check."

Governor Haslam's Executive Order flouts the public trust embodied in that disclosure system, and places his personal and political concerns over the public interest and integrity of the very system he was elected to lead.

To exempt oneself, as a American public official, from financial disclosure rules, is to empower corrupt and ineffective governments throughout the world, and to undermine those who struggle to improve them.