Purpose of FOIA?

What is the purpose of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act?

I had quite an education this week, when I attempted to obtain a simple piece of information from "public bodies." Public bodies include state, city, county and township governments, including departments within those governments, school districts, fire districts, etc.

All I was trying to do was confirm the identity of a young man who had died five days earlier in McHenry County. It started out as a one-minute phone call, when I inquired whether it was (first name, last name) who had died. I already knew the name from adults and students in Crystal Lake, but I thought it responsible to confirm it with an official agency before publishing it.

The investigating police agency wouldn't confirm the name, and a deputy coroner wouldn't confirm it. A second deputy coroner (and secretary) contacted the State's Attorney's Office and told me I would have to file a FOIA request. I did, and then I wrote about my opinion of such government wastefulness and delay.

And then I wrote to the State's Attorney, with a copy to the Coroner. I stated that "McHenry County government employees apparently misunderstand the FOIA. It's our way to pry information out of the government body that it doesn't want to provide it. Why would it withhold this information until forced to respond to a FOIA request?"

The State's Attorney's office responded with an explanation of FOIA and that "... it is good practice for such a public office to treat information that is received in their office with due care and take careful consideration as to what documents and information are released to the public and when." The author of the letter did not share my opinion that the Freedom of Information Act is a tool to “pry information out of the government body that doesn’t want to provide it”.

I don't argue that a public office should treatment information with due care.

By coincidence, a front-page article in today's Northwest Herald addresses FOIA. It was interesting to learn that Illinois was the last state to adopt FOIA. Why was I not surprise?

From that article: "The 1984 law, meant to increase transparency, quickly became a tool that the state's 7,000 units of government could wield to withhold information - journalists and other critics quickly came to call it the "Freedom From Information Act."

You'd think I was breaking new ground at the County level, but I'm not. The Coroner's Office is involved with deaths on a regular basis; that's why they are there. Shouldn't they have had a policy in place for dealing with requests of this type?