Government union contracts kept secret – until it’s too late

Public bodies in Illinois rarely let taxpayers see proposed contracts before a vote – but local officials certainly don’t mind sticking taxpayers with the bill afterward.

In late January, Bloomington School District 87 struck a tentative, three-year contract with its teachers union. But officials will not release the contract until after the school board approves it.

In other words, Bloomington taxpayers – you know, the folks paying the bills – will be in the dark about a contract involving public money until it’s too late to do anything about it.

This isn’t just any contract. It’s one that involves teachers’ salaries, which make up half of the Bloomington $50-million-a-year district’s budget.

Teachers ratified the contract Monday, and the board plans to take up the matter at a meeting on Feb. 11.

When the Illinois Policy Institute called the school district this afternoon, it was told that the contract was still “being processed” and that the district wouldn’t release it until a few days after the vote.

Bloomington’s approach is not uncommon, but it’s a tradition that state Rep. Jeanne Ives, a Wheaton Republican, wants to end.

A couple of years ago, she introduced House Bill 2689, which would require tentative contracts between public bodies and unions to be posted online for at least 14 days. After that, a public hearing would be held before a contract could be approved.

Legislators held a hearing on the bill, Ives said, but it has gone nowhere. That’s not surprising in a General Assembly in which more than 85 percent of members have taken contributions from government unions.

Still, Ives remains optimistic about the bill’s prospects. Bloomington and other school districts, she said, should let the public see union contracts before they take effect.

“They are absolutely wrong on this issue,” Ives said. “They don’t want people to know.”

In 2012, Sauk Valley Media, which publishes newspapers in Sterling and Dixon, tried to get a copy of the tentative agreement between the Sterling school district and its teachers union. It was unsuccessful.

In refusing to release the document, Superintendent Tad Everett called it a “preliminary draft,” citing an exception in the state Freedom of Information Act. But the board’s meeting agenda referred to the item as a “two-year collective bargaining agreement,” giving no indication it was a draft. If it were a draft, Sauk Valley Media asked, when would the board approve the final version?

There would be no second vote, Everett replied.

After the board meeting, the Sterling district said it still wouldn’t release the agreement. Everett said the district’s law firm was busy with other matters. Often, he said, it took months to finalize and print a union contract.

The attorney general backed up the district, saying it could withhold preliminary drafts.

However, Don Craven, an attorney for the Illinois Press Association, told Sauk Valley Media that the union contract was clearly not a preliminary draft.

“By analogy, if they passed a resolution approving the contract with the local Chevy dealer to buy a car, that’s a contract,” Craven said. “Are we going to call the Chevy dealer next week and say, ‘Well, it was preliminary. We didn’t meant it’?”

When you spend your hard-earned money, you want to get all the information you need before you make a purchase, not afterward. So if you’re looking for a new car, you might check the odometer, take a test drive and look under the hood.

Public bodies in Illinois rarely let taxpayers see proposed contracts before a vote – but local officials certainly don’t mind sticking taxpayers with the bill afterward.