GRAMA Got Run Over By a Ramrod

I have been posting a lot about education but I have been interested in other bills as well. While the media is focusing on the torrent of immigration bills, a few have slipped in, perhaps in the hopes they will pass under the radar. The news media didn't let it happen in the case of HB477 Government Records Amendments. This one will be called the GRAMA bill of the year.

GRAMA stands for Government Records Access and Management Act, which was passed in 1992 and clarifies what records are protected as private information and which records are available to the public. According to the Constitution, many records must be open to the public. A GRAMA request is used to force government agencies to make records available. It is often through government records accessed through GRAMA that investigative journalists expose corruption or track down improprieties. It is a good safeguard for citizens.

The difficulties arise when individuals or organizations make unreasonable GRAMA requests that bog down government office employees. Government officials tell of news media on "fishing expeditions" looking for anything that might make a story but causing a lot of work for record keepers, many times at great expense to taxpayers.

Legislators also are told that they must keep records of communications, including those that are written or audio recordings, on paper or digital. They say that they are uncomfortable placing their email messages and phone messages open to the public. They feel that their constituents assume that their messages are private. The sheer number of emails that a politician receives is mind-boggling. It is bothersome to collect and still more bothersome to store them all, on the chance that someone will ask to search the records. On the other hand, would we have known that Governor Blagojevich was auctioning off the Illinois Senate seat, had his phone calls been protected communication?

HB477 would protect messages to legislators and would require those who request records to pay for the cost of the items and the time of the staff who searches for them. This is meant to make folks think twice before making voluminous requests for records.

Whether the bill should pass is no longer debatable; it passed three days after it was introduced. Whether the bill should have passed is debatable. The bill passed way too fast. There is a reason why a three day period is necessary for a bill to be passed on the Consent Calendar. There should be time for the bill to be studied, not only by the legislators but by the public and the media. To wait until the last days so that it passes from one house to the next and is signed, sealed, and delivered in less than a week is not good public policy.