Tuesday’s Peoria City Council meeting included this intriguing exchange:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/PCC-Budg-Req-091107.mp3]The Peoria Civic Center submitted this five-page budget summary document to the City Council. Councilman Sandberg asked, “Is there an itemized budget that culminates in this four or five page document that the City Council has before it? And if so, where is it available for either the council or the general public to review?”
Debbie Ritschel, general manager of the Civic Center, answered, “We do have an internal document, councilman, that is significantly longer than the document you get and we’d be happy to sit with you and go over with you at any time…. It is not a public document.” She went on to say, “We’ve always considered [the itemized budget] work product,” and further stated after additional questioning, “We have always considered this an SMG budget between SMG and the [Peoria Civic Center] Authority and then have created then the public document off of that.”
Well, whenever a governmental entity takes your tax dollars and then says you can’t see how they’re planning to spend it because that information is confidential, you know something is rotten in the state of Denmark. I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request today to get a copy of the itemized budget. It will be interesting to see how they respond (they have seven days to do so).
First of all, the Peoria Civic Center Authority is established by state law (70 ILCS 200/205, known as the “Civic Center Code”) and is “a political subdivision, body politic and municipal corporation,” so there’s no question that it’s a public, governmental entity. Thus, it falls under the Freedom of Information Act, which states, “[e]ach public body shall make available to any person for inspection or copying all public records.” Just to drive the point home, the Civic Center Code itself states (70 ILCS 200/205-60), “All records of the Authority shall be open to public inspection at all reasonable hours.” See that first word there? “All.”
The State of Illinois’ FOIA Guide states that a document is “a public record under the Act if it was prepared, or was or is being used, received, possessed, or under the control of any public body.” It’s clear the itemized budget was received and is under the control of the Civic Center because it was from that document that they created the summary document.
Now, it’s true that “[p]reliminary drafts of memoranda in which opinions or policies are formulated [are] exempt from disclosure” — I’m assuming that’s what Ritschel meant when she called the itemized budget “work product” — but an itemized budget upon which a summary document was based can hardly be considered a “preliminary [draft] of memoranda.” They submitted the summary budget document to the City Council; are they seriously going to argue that their summary is based on nothing more than a draft memo?
In short, I believe the itemized budget is a public document and should be open to public inspection and copying. They haven’t provided any good reason for it not to be, and the fact that they want to keep it under wraps makes me suspicious of them. I have to wonder, what are they trying to hide?
Detailed budgets are always interesting reads. But was is more interesting is a detailing of what they actually spend. A planned budget is a plan.. and not what they actually spend over the course of the year. I would really like to see something more akin to ‘here is the detailed plan and here is the detailed execution of that plan’.
Say the plan (the budget) calls for spending $5000 on toilet paper but they actually spend $10,000. Many questions would be raised by this. Are they bad planners? Where did that extra $5000 in toilet paper go? Is it still in inventory? Did it get used?
How can you really assess how someone is managing the place without some sort of comparison like that ; budget versus actual? How can you protect yourself from theft and graft?
CJ: A call to Terry Mutchler, Public Access Counsel for the IL Attorney General’s office might be an option to pursue.
Good for you C.J. Go for it. I’ll bet they will cough it up. The CC in the past has tried to use the same excuse not to divulge attendance figures and other info, but in the end they give up the documents.
Hi, I just found your blog today, and I’m interested in how your open records request turns out. I’m adding a link to your blog at WikiFOIA – Illinois — I hope you’ll come by and let us know how things go!