By Illinois Review
OpenTheBooks Founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski, who ran in the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary, passed away over the weekend. He was 55.
Late on Monday, the OpenTheBooks nonprofit board of directors released a statement that read:
“It is with tremendous sorrow we announce the passing of Adam Andrzejewski. We extend our deepest sympathies to his wife, Kerry, and his daughters.
Adam was devoted to bringing transparency to government. He walked away from business 15 years ago with a singular idea: hold government accountable to the taxpayers it serves. He founded OpenTheBooks to accomplish that task. He was a happy warrior. Under his leadership, OpenTheBooks has become a highly respected well-known brand. His death is a loss not only to his family and his organization but the nation.
Adam’s belief in the power of transparency to transform government and hold it accountable at every level is the driving force behind our work. His relentless pursuit of open records and forensic auditing has set new standards in the fight for government transparency.
Adam’s dream was to spark a transparency revolution. The result of his leadership is a well-oiled machine that operates at enormous scale and efficiency, dedicated to posting ‘every dime online,’ in as close to real time as possible. The organization now generates tens of thousands of media mentions, and our work is cited in dozens of Congressional hearings, oversight letters, and bill introductions each year.
Guided by the dedicated team he built, Adam’s vision will guide us forward and inform our work in the years to come. We are more dedicated than ever to helping taxpayers hold government officials to account for their spending in a way that honors both Adam and our honorary chairman, the late Senator Tom Coburn.”
Andrzejewski, who co-founded HomePages Directories – a $20 million publishing company, earned 14.5 percent of the vote during the 2010 Illinois Republican primary race for governor. In 2011, just a year later, he founded OpenTheBooks.com, the largest private repository of U.S. public-sector spending whose tagline was, “post “every dime, online, in real time.”
The organization captured all public expenditures in the U.S., including federal government spending, 50 of 50 state checkbooks and 25 million public employee salary and pension records from 50,000 public bodies across America. The financial transparency was welcomed by taxpayers, but despised by government agencies across the country.
In 2022, OpenTheBooks exposed that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had a net worth of $10.4 million – and in 2020 – the year of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci and his wife, who also earned a federal government salary, earned over $868,000 in income and compensation. Andrzejewski and his team also revealed that the Fauci’s earned $1.7 million in total in 2020, including salary, benefits, royalties and travel perks.
As a result of the explosive revelations, Andrzejewski was canceled by Forbes, where he was a contributor, and “admonished” for exposing Fauci’s federal government compensation.
Adam leaves behind a wife and three young daughters.
