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Gov. Pat Quinn & Attorney General Lisa Madigan Gov. Pat Quinn signed the new Freedom of Information Act on Aug. 17, codifying the Public Access Counselor office within the Attorney General’s office and making settlement agreements with government bodies public information.
The IPA has been pressing the Attorney General to seek codification of the Office of the Public Access Counselor for some time. This legislation will allow the Office of Public Counselor to issue binding opinions to public bodies in both Open Meetings and FOIA disputes.
Hopefully, this more efficient administrative process will decrease the private and public resources spent litigating these issues, said Beth Bennett, director of government relations for the Illinois Press Association.
The FOIA amendments should shorten the time for response and provide much tighter exemptions to disclosure. The personal privacy exemptions are much stricter, and the General Assembly has provided a much tighter definition of the “personal information” intended to be exempt from disclosure.
In addition, the Office of Public Access Counselor has authority to oversee the application of the privacy exemptions and the “preliminary document” exemption. These exemptions, often the most abused exemptions in the Act, can now be tracked by the Public Access Counselor to allow for future limitations in those exemptions as necessary.
“The people of Illinois deserve an open, ethical and transparent government,” said Gov. Quinn. “This legislation provides greater oversight to ensure our government complies whenever possible with the Freedom of Information Act, protects the integrity of our boards and commissions and makes state government more accountable to the people we serve.”
“Today, Illinois comes out of the Stone Age and into the modern era of transparency and openness,” said Attorney General Madigan. “By creating a public access counselor with binding opinion authority to fight for an open and accountable government, Illinois is now at the nation's forefront. With this new law, the people of Illinois will now have a greater ability to know what their government is doing."
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