SPRINGFIELD - Last week Lombard Village Trustee Peter Breen was in Springfield to deliver testimony on a bill to require local government transparency statewide. Breen was invited to Springfield to testify by the Illinois Policy Institute, which is spearheading the effort to pass House Bill 3312, which is similar to the Village of Lombard Transparency Policy authored by Breen in 2011. HB 3312 would require local governments to post salaries, spending, budgets, contracts, contact information for officials, and other documents on their websites. The committee advanced the measure to the full House by a 5-0 vote.
"Transparency is good policy for every unit of government. Folks want to know how the government is spending their tax dollars, and this bill will ensure that every dollar is accounted for in full view of the public," said Breen. "I'm proud that Lombard is leading the way in reforming government, and after the committee's positive action today, I hope that the General Assembly will pass this bill and export this needed reform to the rest of the state."
Peter Breen | Photo: AP
HB 3312 would save local governments money by providing an exemption from the Illinois Freedom of Information Act for the documents that they post online in connection with the bill. Breen's testimony, which was submitted to the committee in writing - see below.
Hello, my name is Peter Breen. I am a Village Trustee in Lombard, a suburb of Chicago with roughly 43,000 residents. I also recently completed a brief term as acting village president, after the passing of our prior Village President, Bill Mueller.
As a Village Trustee, I drafted and worked through enactment the strongest municipal transparency policy in the State of Illinois. That policy, which I based both on prior local transparency bills proposed in the General Assembly and on the 10-point local transparency checklist put together by the Illinois Policy Institute, is similar to the one you are considering today in House Bill 3312.
Normally, as a municipal official, I would be testifying against any bill that increased burdens on local government. However, the bill you have before you does not increase burdens but instead helps us at the local level to be more responsive to the residents who elected us and expect us to serve their interests.
The greatest benefit to local governments is the section of the bill exempting the regularly requested information being posted online from the FOIA law. This will save a good deal of staff time and attention handling FOIA requests for information that can instead be quickly obtained on our websites. Further, setting a statewide standard for the types of regularly requested information required will facilitate the creation of model website templates that local governments can easily adopt and fit to their particular needs. As well, a statewide standard will facilitate development of best practices to minimize any of the perceived difficulties of posting documents to these websites.
Transparency provides numerous benefits for those of us in local government. For the most part, local government officials are very part-time, essentially volunteers, and thus welcome the assistance of members of the public in providing feedback on government policy and spending. Putting our spending and contracts online allows our residents, many of whom have expertise in various areas related to our work as a village, to help us ensure that our government runs efficiently. And yes, transparency also allows watchdog groups and the media to look carefully into what we are doing at the local level. Our philosophy in the Village of Lombard is, if there is something bad happening or some wasteful expenditure being made, we don't want to ignore or minimize the problem, we want to fix it. Our lived experience after putting this policy in place is that Lombard residents are happy to see how their tax dollars are being spent -- and they see that we are spending their money prudently and effectively.
However, while we are now enjoying the benefits of transparency in Lombard, the process of enacting our transparency policy was anything but easy. It took roughly six months to work the proposal through to enactment, with heavy opposition all the way. We had numerous hearings and conversations showing that the fears about the policy were unfounded. Our local newspapers editorialized in favor of the measure. Yet, even with all of this positive activity, the outcome of the proposal was in doubt all the way.
From my own experience and from conversations with other local officials, I know that the opposition to transparency can be fierce, whether based on false assumptions about cost or difficulty, or worse because those opponents do not want the public to know how moneys are being spent or how much a particular person is being paid. Our local officials know that their voters want transparency, but because of this opposition, these dedicated public servants are unable to deliver transparency to their constituents.
Should you enact this bill, you will be increasing accountability for local governments, while at the same time freeing them of a burden under FOIA. Because the materials required to be posted here are the same sort that are delivered to boards and councils at their meetings -- and since most of them are already generated by or available on a computer -- putting these on the web will be as simple as clicking a button. I urge you to advance HB 3312, a common-sense bipartisan measure, to the full House. Thank you.
