FOIA foibles in the Senate

The Illinois Senate is about to stick it to the voice of freedom. Check out Senate Bill 2203; go to http://www.ilga.gov/ and search in the box on the left for SB 2203.

Sen. Ed Mahoney (D-Chicago) ran to the rescue of the Village of Alsip after some jerk filed 90 FOIA requests in one day. Was he looking for a prize or something?

The Bill is an attempt to limit access to public information by restricting the number of FOIA requests in a year to 48 before deeming someone "vexatious". Oh, no! The dreaded V-word! Also, to extend the response time. And a worrisome part of the bill is a possible $25/hour search fee.

Can you just see it now? A reporter (or blogger or other concerned citizen) tries to hold a "public body" (that's your government office!) responsible and pry out some information that it refuses to release. Then the "public body" says, "This will cost you $25/hour, and we think it will take about a dozen hours to find what you want. Will you play (errr, pay) for $300?"

City Hall doesn't like it when I call a FOIA Request "prying" information out of them, but that's exactly what it is. I believe that most information should be available from a city, county, state, township, etc. without a FOIA request. In fact, it was recently suggested to me that I FOIA information that I had just been told wasn't available. The immediate question in my mind was, "If the information isn't available, what good will it do to submit a FOIA request?" How much would they have charged me to search for information that didn't exist?

The Citizen Advocacy Center's executive director said, "SB 2203 is a detriment to the democratic process." (Northwest Herald 5/24/11). Amen.