by Mark Cavers

Over the past three months, the Illinois Policy Institute has been working with 16 government entities in Lyons Township to the implement transparency best-practices as part of our local government transparency project. The Institute just completed a second round of audits on the local governments; this is an important benchmark for checking progress. You can see the full results below.

Bright spots

The City of Countryside had the highest score of all government units in Lyons Township with an 80.5%. The city made a commitment to becoming more transparency after we shared the results of our first audit and went to work adding information to their website. The City of Countryside's work paid off with their second audit seeing a 50% improvement over the 29% they received on the first audit. The city added FOIA information, budgets, taxes and lobbying information among other things to increase their score.

The Village of Riverside also showed a willingness to work towards more transparency, improving their score by 36 points. Over two months, the Village of Riverside updated and added information including financial audits and expenditures to their website and increased their score from 42% to 77%. Today, if citizens want information on taxes and fees collected by the Village of Riverside they can find it on the village's website

Areas of concern

The other 14 government units the Institute audited all scored under 50% with final scores ranging from 47% to 5%. This signals a need for continued transparency work in Lyons Township. Many websites lacked even the most basic information including budgets, tax rates, and contact information for Freedom of Information Act Officers. Without this information taxpayers are left in the dark, unable to see how government is spending their money.

If you are interested in how the local governments that serve you scored in detail click here.

Next steps

The Illinois Policy Institute is committed to bringing transparency to all levels of government. We look forward to continuing to work with all the government units in Lyons Township to provide more information to their citizens. The Illinois Policy Institute looks to The City of Countryside and the Village of Riverside to continue to provide leadership and a positive example for their neighboring governments.

If you live in Lyons Township and are interested in joining in and helping your local governments become more transparency please contact me mcavers@illinoispolicy.org or 217-528-8800.

*As of September 14th, 2011, the Village of Bridgeview had improved their score to a 37.5