Purpose of the Freedom of Information Act

After reading the latest runaround from McHenry County College officials trying to hide when they starting seriously thinking about addition of entertainment to the MCC’s mission, a friend of McHenry County Blog copied this part of the Freedom of Information Act and emailed it to me:

(5 ILCS 140/) Freedom of Information Act.

(5 ILCS 140/1) (from Ch. 116, par. 201) Sec. 1. Pursuant to the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of government, it is declared to be the public policy of the State of Illinois that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts and policies of those who represent them as public officials and public employees consistent with the terms of this Act. Such access is necessary to enable the people to fulfill their duties of discussing public issues fully and freely, making informed political judgments and monitoring government to ensure that it is being conducted in the public interest.

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.

This Act is not intended to create an obligation on the part of any public body to maintain or prepare any public record which was not maintained or prepared by such public body at the time when this Act becomes effective, except as otherwise required by applicable local, State or federal law.

These restraints on information access should be seen as limited exceptions to the general rule that the people have a right to know the decisions, policies, procedures, rules, standards, and other aspects of government activity that affect the conduct of government and the lives of any or all of the people. The provisions of this Act shall be construed to this end. This Act shall be the exclusive State statute on freedom of information, except to the extent that other State statutes might create additional restrictions on disclosure of information or other laws in Illinois might create additional obligations for disclosure of information to the public. (Source: P.A. 83﷓1013.)

Don’t guess the powers that be at MCC much care, do you?

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Note the commercial enterprise depicted in the drawing of the baseball stadium. This is so “commercial” that the $10 million in bonds to construct it cannot be tax free. That means the interest rate on that borrowed $10 million will be higher than for the other $16-20 million.

The stadium will also have to pay property taxes because of the private nature of its use.


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