FOIA officer lies to justify husband's no-bid contract

In Illinois recently, the husband of a bi-county agency FOIA officer was awarded a no-bid $124,000 contract with his wife's agency.  A local newspaper made a FOIA request to the agency for a copy of the agency's procurement rules.

The FOIA officer responded that “per consultation with legal counsel" there were no such rules.  Subsequently, however, the board chairman of one of the counties discovered that, indeed, there were procurement rules, including provisions for competitive bidding.

A second FOIA request revealed that the agency's administrator (the FOIA officer's boss) and the agency's attorney conspired to evade disclosing the pertinent rules.  

The administrator told the FOIA officer to deny the existence of procurement rules and, with knowledge that the rules did exist, the FOIA officer complied.

The county board chairman admonished the FOIA officer, “You have a duty to answer to the public in an honest fashion, and you didn’t do that. This is a bold-faced lie.”

This stuff happens, folks, and more often than most of us would like to think.  I don't know what, if anything, will come of this incident, but one thing is clear.  When people like the FOIA officer in this case, her boss and the agency's attorney spend some time behind bars for their criminal (this is classic RICO) deceit, these types of abuses will be less frequent.

UPDATE (9-19-13):  It is reported that the FOIA officer in question has announced that she will step down 9-27-13.  Also reported, there may have been other instances of fraud in the bi-county health department under scrutiny.  A forensic audit is anticipated.  
http://www.paxtonrecord.net/news/health/health-care/2013-09-17/health-department-foia-officertobacco-coordinator-resigns.html

FOIA Reform Scams

I have an issue with the way news media present such rosy prospects for FOIA each year during Sunshine Week.  Year after year, optimism is based, not on new ideas to improve FOIA being enacted into law, but merely on a new bill with a short shelf life being introduced or reported out of committee.  

The ballyhoo over the Issa-Cummings FOIA implementation bill taken up by the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee just in time for this past Sunshine Week comes to mind.  Publicizing that is like awarding a soldier the Congressional Medal of Honor for telling what he might do in combat someday.

Just as bad or worse, news organizations downplay or ignore efforts to inhibit open government.  A recent example would be proposals put forward by the Michigan State Court Administrative Office.

In RICO cases, the cast of characters consists of three types: (1) racketeers, often con artists, (2) dupes exploited as false fronts and (3) victims.  Sunshine Week works in a similar fashion.  Legislators, press and public.

Let’s hope that annual celebrations by the press of wobbly legislative hints of reform haven’t become a meaningless ritual.  If next year’s Sunshine Week is going to be any different, now is the time to start planning for it.