Working Hard To Keep You In The Dark, Covered With Dung

You've probably heard of "mushroom management" - keeping staff in the dark, covering them with dung, and when they've grown big enough, canning them. You might have also heard of the Freedom Of Information Act - here's what the Supreme Court said about it:
"The basic purpose of FOIA is to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.”
                                             United States Supreme Court in NLRB v. Robbins Tire Co.
                                             437 U.S. 214, 242 (1978)

Did you know that several governmental agencies, including the Village of Lisle and the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, are using your tax dollars to pay lawyers and lobbyists to attempt to change the state's FOIA law so that they can restrict access to public documents?  They claim that complying with the FOIA law is too expensive.  Here are the facts, per FOIA logs and Village records (which we would not have access to if the FOIA is changed):

•  60% of all FOIA requests submitted to Lisle in 2010 were from people outside of Lisle
• 42% of all FOIA requests submitted to Lisle in 2010 were for copies of police reports
• Time spent in 2010 responding to FOIA requests amounted to 0.3% of the total employee time.

So what's the real reason your public officials want to keep you in the dark? In the case of the Forest Preserve District, it could be just to avoid embarrassment.  In the case of Lisle, however, the reasons are much more serious.

If you're outraged by this, go to the meetings of the Village Board and Forest Preserve District Board and tell them so -- then vote accordingly when election time comes.  If you're not outraged by this, you must enjoy being a mushroom.