Liberty Leaders Use FOIA to Discover Extreme Government Compensation
Craig Mijares and Nancy Thorner are taxpayer heroes for getting information out to the public on excessive employee compensation.
by Brian Costin
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a law that ensures citizens access to public documents and allows watchdogs to hold their government accountable. The key to holding government accountable to the people is being able to obtain information and educate themselves about what the government does.
Finding information through FOIA laws is not difficult. With improvements to the FOIA law in 2009, now many documents can be obtained for free, if they are in electronic format. Heres a sample FOIA letter to use if you are thinking about filing your own FOIA request.
Two of the Illinois Policy Institutes Liberty Leaders have used the new and improved FOIA laws to examine excessive executive compensation of various government bodies where they live.
Nancy Thorner, has looked into the executive compensation of Dr. Harry Griffith, the Superintendent of Lake Forest Districts 67 and 115. What she found was pretty shocking!
Not only does Dr. Harry Griffith, superintendent of Lake Forest District’s 67 and 115, rank as the 2nd highest paid Superintendent in the state of Illinois in cash compensation ($348,540), but Griffith has been able to negotiate a contract to receive benefits and perquisites which brings his total compensation for the 2010-11 school year to over $430,000. Griffith’s compensation package amounts to more than the Chicago and Milwaukee school chiefs and the governor of Illinois!
In Palatine, Liberty Leader Craig Mijares has been looking into the compensation of the Village Manager for his hometown. There he revealed all sorts of perquisites and cushy benefits and the total bill to the taxpayers is astonishing.
Last fall, a resident of Palatine started questioning his municipality. His interest was piqued because property taxes were hiked, village fees were hiked, a brand-new electric consumption tax was instituted and officials were complaining that the red-light cameras were not producing enough ticket revenue. Then, the village manager forecast a future of higher taxes in his annual letter.
Amongst other questions, the resident just wanted to know a simple answer: the total 2009 compensation of the village manager. The inquiry was arduous. The results were stunning. The entire cash and non-cash compensation package amounted to an initial estimate of $351,000, then revised to $355,000, and click to review the now re-revised estimate of $338,400 plus. In 2009, on base salary alone, the village manager out-earned every governor of the 50 states.
Overall, there were over twenty buckets of compensation including a $35,000 cash bonus, taxpayer funded car, and five insurance programs: 90% paid medical, dental, prescription, life and short/long term disability. A sixth insurance program was discovered- taxpayers were funding long-term care insurance. LT care insurance provides for custodial care in a private home, adult daycare setting, assisted-living facility, or nursing home.
Craig Mijares and Nancy Thorner are taxpayer heroes for getting information out to the public on excessive executive compensation of public officials.
With all public entities the taxpayers absolutely have a right to know where their dollars are going, including employee compensation. Unfortunately, many local government watchdogs like Mijares and Thorner are forced to cajole their democratic institutions into providing basic information about where their tax dollars are spent instead of this information being proactively provided, as SB 37 proposes.
Recent proposals in Springfield led by the Illinois Municipal League, including SB 1645, are attempting to curb the ability of good government watchdogs from obtaining public information and share it with the public. SB 1645 allows local government bodies to arbitrarily deny certain or numerous FOIA request on the basis of the requests being Vexatious. Trying to shut down the ability of the public to access basic information and hold government accountable, is absolutely inexcusable and a dangerous omen for democracy in Illinois.
With all the corruption and financial problems in Illinois we need more laws like SB 37, that support the rights of taxpayer watchdogs like Nancy Thorner and Craig Mijares, and less laws like SB 1645 that protect overreaching government officials from public scrutiny.