If anyone can understand why the Board will not produce these numbers and let us know whatn has been spent please let me know.
March 26, 2007
Ms. Kathleen F. Rush
Village Manager
27 Riverside Road
Riverside, IL 60546
Dear Ms. Rush:
I am in receipt of your response, dated March 20, 2007, to my FOIA request dated 3/17/07. I find it completely unacceptable and obstructionist. I have requested public records on behalf of Riverside's residents and voters - nothing more. We simply want to know how and how much of our tax dollars have been spent in the quest for downtown redevelopment, and we want to know it before the April 17th election.
Illinois Freedom of Information Act
“—¦it is declared to be the public policy of the State of Illinois that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government [—¦] Such access is necessary to enable the people to fulfill their duties of discussing public issues fully and freely, making informed political judgments and monitoring government to ensure that it is being conducted in the public interest.— (5 ILCS 140/1)
Illinois' Freedom of Information Act is intended to open the government to all citizens by guaranteeing access to governmental records in whatever form they are maintained.—
As you know, I originally filed an FOIA request on March 5th, 2007, which asked for the Village to provide the total amounts spent to date on just three projects: The B2 Zoning Code, The Transit-Oriented Development Study, and this current TIF project. The answer I received to that request was only partial, providing copies of some bills paid for the TOD and TIF, and none at all for the B2 Zoning project.
When I exchanged e-mails with the Village Finance Director I asked for totals of the amount paid to each of the lead consultants and a total (close approximation) spent on each of these projects. Mr. Wachtel answered saying:
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—˜Our accounting system does not track project A or task B with all
associated charges associated with it. Rather, we track office
supplies, for example, by department or other operational group.
So the quick answer is no, we can't look at a single number/account in our
General Ledger to get the information you seek. When we have a
contract with a consultant, we certainly do track what has been paid
toward that contract so we can ensure the contract terms are met.
When a significant effort is undertaken, there may be several vendors
paid from accounts ranging from professional services, legal
services, office supplies, etc. which further complicates this task. It is not
best practices to account for short term projects (like B-2
zoning) in a separate department or account as there would be no way to evaluate expenditures from year to year.
Frankly I found that answer highly suspect, as it seems to me that any entity, public or private. should keep a record of where and for what it spent its money, especially a Village that is using public taxpayer dollars.
I then tried, in an exchange of e-mails with Mr. Wachtel, to simplify my request by asking only for the amounts paid to the lead consultants for each of these projects. Again, this information has not been provided.
Since I assumed that these numbers would be easily found on 1099s issued to these firms, and that all these payments would already have been approved by the Board in one way or another, and hence would already be public information, I filed my second FOIA request on March 17th, to which Mr. Wachtel replied:
“I cannot provide you tax documents as there is an exemption due to
privacy reasons (see excerpt below).
(b) Information that, if disclosed, would constitute a clearly
unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, unless the disclosure is
consented to in writing by the individual subjects of the information.
The disclosure of information that bears on the public duties of
public employees and officials shall not be considered an invasion of
personal privacy. Information exempted under this subsection (b) shall
include but is not limited to:
(iv) information required of any taxpayer in connection with
the assessment or collection of any tax unless disclosure is otherwise
required by State statute;
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However, we can provide you with free copies of the Treasurer's Report for 2003, 2004 and 2005 as those have been published in the newspaper.
We have not published the 2006 Treasurer's Report as that is completed
in conjunction with our annual audit, and will be published in June.
The 2007 Treasurer's Report will be prepared in June, 2008.
Further requests will require additional FOIA forms.—
I question this decision because, after all, these were public funds paid for services contracted with the Village. Presumably payments were all approved by the Board and therefore releasing this information to the residents could hardly be deemed “an invasion of privacy.—
I, and many, many other residents of the Village believe this information must be made public. Since I am requesting this information in the interest of all Village residents I request a waiver of all fees for this request. Disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the Village government.
Since you have so far refused this request I yesterday sent an Open Letter to the Trustees asking at least one of them to request this information on behalf of the public and for this issue to be agendized and discussed at the Village Board COW meeting scheduled for April 3. I hereby formally request you to put this item on that agenda.
We have an election coming on April 17th. Before the voters go to the polls they have the right to know how much this thrust for redevelopment has cost and who has been paid what. Voters, when faced with an advisory referendum for your $20 million TIF, need to know that it not only allows for up to $1.5 million (7%) in fees for legal, engineering and consultants, but how much of that figure has already been paid.
If the Trustees fail to request, receive and supply the public with these numbers I will have no alternative but to seek help from the Illinois Attorney General's Public Access Counselor., Terry Mutchler. I do not wish you to provide me with another copy of the incomplete records you already have.
Sincerely,
Donald Spatny