MCC ponders Packard duties

CRYSTAL LAKE – Under fire for continuing to pay former President Walt Packard, the McHenry County College Board discussed ways Thursday to put him to work.

“We need to maximize the value that Dr. Packard could be providing to this institution,” trustee Donna Kurtz said.

Packard stepped down as president in February. He now serves as president emeritus, a job that requires no regular office hours but retains his former salary of $188,564 a year through June 30, 2010.

Kurtz suggested several ventures for Packard to work on, such as developing a merit-based pay system for the college’s administrators. Other board members proposed having Packard assist administrators with ongoing projects that he had worked on before stepping down.

Packard’s contract stipulates that such work assignments be submitted to him in writing with reasonable deadlines..(read full)

On April 16, the Board of Trustees at the College of DuPage, a large community college in Illinois, made history by voting unanimously to adopt the Academic Bill of Rights and include it in the school’s policy manual, making DuPage the first campus in the nation to have adopted the actual text of the Academic Bill of Rights and only the third campus to recognize student-specific academic freedom protections. But the teachers unions, understanding the threat the Academic Bill Rights posed to their political agendas on the DuPage campus, were ready for this development and engineered the installation of a new Board to reverse this decision on May 4, a scant two weeks after DuPage had committed itself to academic freedom.

The NEA, which has opposed scholarships for inner city black and Hispanic children and has fought the Academic Bill of Rights since its introduction over half a decade ago, had seen the victory of the Academic Bill of Rights coming. It had poured $100,000 into the community college trustee election on March 7, and succeeded in gaining a four-seat majority on the DuPage Board of Trustees. On May 4, only days after being seated, the four new union-backed trustees voted to rescind the months-long work of the previous board (which NEA sympathizers had tried to stigmatize as “a lame duck board”), culminating in the April 16 vote. Kory Atkinson, a member of the previous board who helped to pass the Bill, commented: “The decision by the new College of DuPage board to rescind the Academic Bill of Rights is nothing more than the exercise of raw political power. The faculty union poured over $100,000 into recent board elections and essentially bought 4 board members. It is noteworthy that the Board voted to rescind its ABOR policy by a 4-3 vote, and that each of the 4 trustees voting to rescind the policy received all of their campaign contributions, totaling tens of thousands of dollars apiece, from the faculty union.”… (read full)

Learn more about the Academic Bill of Rights here.

Proft’s latest featured commentary on Don Wade & Roma:

Click here to listen to an .mp3 of this commentary as heard on this morning’s Don Wade & Roma Morning Show on WLS AM-890.

Tolerance fails T-shirt test

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we’re all united now, let’s consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching “inclusion,” and she decided to see how included she could be.

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

“McCain Girl.”

“I was just really curious how they’d react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters,” Catherine told us. “I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be.”

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain’s name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

“People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn’t be wearing it,” Catherine said.

Then it got worse.

“One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed,” Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

But students weren’t the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

“In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain,” Catherine said… [read full]

Chris Robbling’s criticism of the McCain campaign seems a bit extreme, like an arm-chair quarterback chewing up competing political consultants, but overall it’s a good show…

I don’t see how anyone can criticize Rick Davis’s TV ads as being un-memorable. The Obama/Hollywood ad was the most memorable of the season…

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was a great step forward for citizens as they sought to learn about the behavior of their government and hold it to account. FOIA allows people to request certain types of information from government officials, including salaries, contracts, expenditures and more. There are some limits to what one can request through FOIA, however, those items are relatively few. Information relating to national defense or a criminal case, for instance, are generally exempt from FOIA.

There is no limit to how many documents a citizen can request through FOIA or how frequently they can petition. 

But sometimes citizens exercising their right to know about their government run into some difficulty. This can mean waiting weeks or even months before they receive the information they have requested.

Other times citizens may run into government officials who become weary of making public information available to those who ask for it. This appears to be what has happened with Riccardo A. Mora of Norridge, Illinois in his project to learn more about the operations of his local school district.

Mora has issued 21 FOIA requests since February 2008 to Ridgewood High School District 234. “I decided to investigate, gather facts and quotes from reliable sources…[and present] that information to my neighbors for their consideration,” says Mora.

Mora requested numerous items from the school district, including expenditures, capital plans, audits, and notices. He is interested in seeing just how the district spends taxpayers’ money prior to a November vote that will determine whether property taxes will increase to fund the schools.

On September 29th, Mora received a letter from the law firm Schartz, Lipton and Taylor of Chicago, which notified him that the school district had retained the firm in the matter of his FOIA requests.

In the letter (PDF), the district’s lawyer wrote that Mora was abusing the FOIA and that his requests may not be fulfilled.

The Act is not intended to be used for purposes of furthering personal gain. See 5 ILCS 140/1…Your numerous FOIA requests demonstrate that you are mis-using FOIA as a vehicle to address personal issues rather than public interest…The use of FOIA to further a personal rather than public need is clearly an abuse of the Act…We are writing at this time to make you aware that we will work closely with the District to scrutinize and future FOIA requests propounded by you upon the District to insure they are within the spirit of the Act.

The statute that the lawyer cites is the Illinois FOI law. She writes, correctly, how FOIA requests are not supposed to disrupt the work of the government body from which a citizen requests information.

This Act is not intended to be used to violate individual privacy, nor for the purpose of furthering a commercial enterprise, or to disrupt the duly‑undertaken work of any public body independent of the fulfillment of any of the fore‑mentioned rights of the people to access to information. 

The lawyer claims that a district staffer spent 20 hours fulfilling Mora’s FOIA request to prove how this interfered with the operation of the office. However, 20 hours of an employee’s time spread over a two week period hardly interferes with the normal operation of the school system.

In fact, being accountable to the citizens of the district is right up there with making sure that kids are being taught well, so public disclosure is part of the “duly-undertaken work” of the district.

The lawyer’s main claim, however, is that Mora is sending FOIA requests to further himself in some way. The letter claims that submitting a FOIA request for “personal gain” is outside of the act’s parameters. However, the only mention of “personal” anything (not pertaining to personal privacy) in the Illinois FOIA is in 5 ILCS 140/6–Authority to charge fees:

(b) Documents shall be furnished without charge or at a reduced charge, as determined by the public body, if the person requesting the documents states the specific purpose for the request and indicates that a waiver or reduction of the fee is in the public interest. Waiver or reduction of the fee is in the public interest if the principal purpose of the request is to access and disseminate information regarding the health, safety and welfare or the legal rights of the general public and is not for the principal purpose of personal or commercial benefit.

There is no mention whatsoever in the statute of the phrase “personal gain.” The petitioner’s motives are mentioned nowhere in the Illinois FOIA law.

A citizen can request a document for personal benefit, it seems, but he or she will have to pay for the reproduction of the document(s). Mora has already paid to have numerous documents reproduced, and is now requesting a refund for being overcharged (PDF).

Regardless of his reason for asking the information, Mora is entitled to the information he is requesting, and the Ridgewood High School district should provide him with it.

Additionally, the district should seriously consider posting its financial data in an accessible format on its website. Once all of the information is online the district may face the prospect of fewer FOIA requests and will increase the level of trust between the citizens and the school. A great number of school districts are already posting their expenditures and budgets online. See a list of transparent government school districts here.

There’s no doubt about it–FOIA has advanced the cause of government transparency, but it’s not necessarily a speedy solution. It does take time for staffers to complete citizens’ FOIA requests. People are entitled to know what their government is up to, and the combination of new citizen interest and new technology make it easier and more affordable than ever for government to implement comprehensive transparency policies.

This piece was posted originally on OpenIllinois.org, the source for information on government transparency in Illinois. OpenIllinois.org is a project of the Illinois Policy Institute.

Ron Gidwitz, a Republican candidate for governor in 2006 and a successful businessman, believes state Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) is sincere when he talks about reforming the public school system in Illinois.

“When I heard what he was saying about the need for school funding reform, I just picked up the phone and told him if there was anything I could do to help, let me know,” Gidwitz said.

As a result, Gidwitz and Meeks have joined forces to promote the Illinois 21st Century School Reform Initiative - a pilot project that would use clusters of schools in Chicago, the south suburbs and downstate Illinois to demonstrate that more money for schools can make a difference if it is tied to specific programs designed to help children learn.

“This is what business leaders in Illinois have been asking for for 20 years in this state,” said Gidwitz, former chief executive of Helene Curtis cosmetics.

“We don’t mind spending additional money on education if we know it’s not going into a black hole. We just want to know that there will be improvement as a result of the additional spending, and this program is designed to do that.’ … (read full)