Many Illinois residents are making a run for the border, which is distressing but not unexpected.

The state’s anti-business policies, its high tax rate and its staggering debt make people want to flee, and individuals and businesses closest to a border are in good position to do so. There are other reasons for people leaving, of course, but the sad state of the state is the biggest.

Overall, Illinois is still growing, although much slower than anyone would like. It’s no coincidence that the county that lost the most population in 2012, Winnebago County in Northern Illinois, and St. Clair and Madison counties, second and fourth in population losses, border other states.

Expect the exodus to accelerate unless things start changing. When jobs leave, people follow. St. Clair County’s unemployment rate in January was 11 percent, and Madison County’s 9.8 percent.

What’s particularly sad is that Illinois political leaders are standing by and watching rather than doing something about our state’s problems. They have the power to enact a plan that would stabilize the state’s employee pension programs, fix a broken worker’s compensation system and restore public confidence, but choose to do nothing.

Unlike in the federal government, lawmakers can’t blame it on political gridlock. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the Illinois legislature and control the governor’s mansion.

Soon Democrats may have supermajorities over nothing.

___

March 14, 2013

The (Springfield) State Journal-Register

Time to revisit the state’s FOIA Act

As Sunshine Week comes to a close, it’s important to reflect on the state of open government in Illinois, nearly four years after lawmakers and Attorney General Lisa Madigan rewrote the Freedom of Information Act.

Madigan and other legislative leaders, including Senate President John Cullerton, touted the rewrite as an antidote to both the former Gov. Rod Blagojevich scandals and Illinois’ culture of government secrecy.

This page supported the rewrite, although as with every piece of legislation, there were parts of it that were unsatisfactory.

Even the parts that seemed like they would work have not, and it’s time once again to revisit the law.

“Unfortunately, the answer is yes,” said Don Craven, an attorney who has litigated FOIA issues on behalf of this newspaper and the Illinois Press Association, when he was asked last week on WUIS-FM whether there is less openness today than four years ago.

Here are just a few of the law’s deficiencies:

(asterisk) Governments still can’t be bothered to respond in a timely manner to requests.

(asterisk) When officials read the law and discover that they have five days to respond to a request, many simply take the five days instead of providing basic, simple information immediately. Most requests aren’t that complicated, and much of the basic information about government should be on government websites anyway.

(asterisk) The public access counselor, whose job it is to referee disputes between FOIA requesters and governments, seemed like a good idea when Madigan came up with the position. It was a way to ensure disputes got settled quickly without requesters and governments incurring legal costs. In 2012, there were 3,119 requests filed with the public access counselor by those denied records.

While this was a reduction from the previous year because of a change in the law, there is still too much of a tendency by public bodies to deny requests and let the public access counselor decide instead of erring on the side of transparency.

Sometimes, the public access counselor rules in favor of a requester but the unit of government simply ignores the counselor. The public access counselor is overworked, resulting in it taking too long to rule on requests. A stronger, more clear-cut law would reduce the counselor’s workload and allow only the most weighty questions to be dealt with.

(asterisk) One of the provisions aimed at adding teeth to the law and deterring frivolous denials was to require public bodies to pick up the cost of requesters’ legal fees if the requester wins in court. Unfortunately, a recent court decision involving the Rock River Times and the Rockford Public School District gutted that provision.

In this case, the public body forced the newspaper into court and later changed its mind and released the documents. But the newspaper could not get its legal fees paid because there was never a court order to release the records. The school district, incidentally, has used public tax dollars to play such games.

The FOIA rewrite utterly has failed to break state and local governments of their first instinct, which is to say “no” when citizens want information about what their government is doing.

___

March 14, 2013

The (Crystal Lake) Northwest Herald

Voting in schools not a problem

When it comes to voting in Illinois, where the electorate casts its ballots is the least of our worries.

Educating voters and getting them to the polls are the real issues.

But doing away with voting in schools? That’s a solution waiting for a problem.

State Reps. Jack Franks, D-Marengo, and Tim Bivins, R-Dixon, are sponsoring a plan that would eliminate using schools as polling places.

Franks, Bivins and others said safety is the driving force behind the plan.

“I just know in my heart of hearts, that if we continue to allow this, someday we are going to have a version of Sandy Hook,” Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka said, referencing the December shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut.

While looking out for our children and making schools safer is a worthy cause, the reality is that anybody determined to carry out a violent act at an Illinois school is likely to be motivated enough to do so regardless of whether a school is a polling place or not.

While such a plan might not present a problem in some counties – Whiteside and Lee counties, for example, already have no schools serving as polling places – eliminating schools from the list of places where people can vote would be a big issue in McHenry County.

“If we don’t have schools, we won’t have polling places,” McHenry County Clerk Kathie Schultz said. “We’re already using fire stations and police stations, but many don’t have the room to host a polling place.”

Schultz estimated in an Illinois Watchdog story that “about a quarter” of McHenry County’s 212 polling places are inside schools. She also pointed out that if polling places are moved out of schools to other public buildings where parking is an issue, then the federal government could get involved.

“I’m sure if we had issues with long wait times or access, then the feds would act,” Schultz said.

Making schools safer should be an ongoing conversation, but we don’t support a plan that’s unlikely to deter violence and would have such a drastic effect on voting in McHenry County.

___

March 14, 2013

The Jacksonville Journal Courier

Settlement brings with it a crucial admonition

Somewhere out there, secrets are floating around. Invisible data waves are sharing emails, passwords and lists of places visited online.

It’s called “payload data” and without the benefit of a secure network, it can be easily mined by anyone with a novice knowledge of the Internet and a few bucks to burn. Plans are readily available online for making a device to capture this type of information with basically a Pringles can and a few feet of wire.

Obviously, this is not the type of personal information the average person wants downloaded onto some bored computer geek’s hard drive, whether the intentions are nefarious or not.

But that’s exactly what happened between 2008 and 2010 when Google sent people traipsing across the nation to gather data for its Street View program. Specially equipped cars covered thousands and thousands of miles of roads and sucked in information and photos so people can go online and see real-life views of cities and towns they search.

In Google’s case, it was an accident. Like a discarded tire caught in a fisherman’s net, Google says it didn’t intend to get such information and didn’t want it anyway. Further, the massive online firm said, it didn’t share the information with anyone else.

That didn’t stop 37 states — including Illinois — from suing.

Google this week agreed to settle with attorneys general from the states and the District of Columbia for $7 million or, as Google calls it, lunch money.

It’s a lesson to Google, but should be more of a cautionary tale for consumers.

Key among safeguards is to make sure any home wireless networks are secure. Most laptops and smartphones have the ability to sniff out every wireless network within their range and it’s amazing how many of those are often unprotected from outside use. Even some of the “protected” ones rely on passwords a child could crack.

Be wary of public wireless networks, many of which are not secure.

The Internet is a wonderful thing and a technological marvel, but it also has a dangerous side. Private information can unknowingly and unwittingly be given away — as the Google episode has shown — without proper safeguards.

Ignore the warning and the next lesson might not be as sedate.