At the very moment that Americans are becoming more aware and upset with disparities in income, wealth and corporate influence, Illinois Governor Quinn has signed a tax break benefiting the state’s large corporations. In particular, this bill benefits CME of Chicago, which had threatened to leave the State if they did not get their way.

The announcement on the signing of this bill came late in the day on Friday, December 16, 2011. A late- in-the-day-Friday announcement is typically a sign that the there is no desire to publicize the action to the general public. On the other hand, SB 400, which is a companion bill to the corporate tax cut bill, was not signed. The most probable reason is that the Governor is waiting for a more opportune moment to sign the companion bill, so that it will receive plenty of press attention.

Sears and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce have already made press releases praising the Governor for signing the corporate tax break bill. As of this moment, the general public has not responded to the Governor’s action. The bill had been previously sold as a method of keeping jobs in Illinois, which was being denounced as a “business unfriendly” state.

The truth is that prior to the enacting of this bill, Illinois ranked 23^rd nationally for state tax burdens on business. That places the state about in the middle – neither exceptionally high, nor lower than average.

The push to give big business another favor looks a little like blackmail with business threatening to leave if they did not get their way. In fact, there are large companies in Illinois that pay little or no tax due to loopholes in the law. Baxter International and Integrys Energy Group both paid zero in taxes while earning over $1.7 billion in profits.

There are also corporations in Illinois that are paying state taxes commensurate with what the law calls for. The difference is that some corporations are “fortunate” enough to have industry-specific tax breaks. The difference seems to be that some corporations are large and aggressive enough to threaten legislators and the Governor with relocation from the state if they do not get their way. Baxter has been skillful enough in its economic blackmail that it has received $21 million from the state of Illinois, rather than paying taxes. This at a time when the state has been forced to delay payment of its bills and the Governor regularly proposes laying off large numbers of employees in order to balance the budget. The harm that is done to the state is difficult to calculate, but could be as high as $28 billion in lost revenue from 2008 to 2010.

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Illinois Governor Pat Quinn recently signed into law HB1716. which allows public agencies to charge people for the cost of record retrieval if the records are stored off site, and allows time delays in responding to “frequent requesters” of records using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A “frequent requester” is defined in the bill as anyone who has requested more than 50 documents in a year, or 15 in a 30-day period. The bill does mention exemptions for members of “the new media” and traditional media. The bill was justified as a cost saving measure that would also allow the general public to have easier access to records, since those “frequent requesters” will be less likely to tie up resources with the passage of this bill.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan initially opposed the bill, but has changed her stance and now supports it. The bill came about after a former police chief of Alsip, IL made 90 record requests in a single day. This was described as harassment, using the FOIA law as a tool to do damage rather than its original purpose of shining light on those in power.

Madigan described the former process of agencies contacting her office for permission to delay FOIA requests as problematic. Some agencies are alleged to have used the procedure as a method of “stopping the clock” on FOIA requests that they simply did not want to deliver on. An additional problem the AG’s office expects this bill to solve is the large backlog of requests caused by so many agencies requesting delays in fulfilling FOIA requests.

Watchdog groups such as the Sunlight Foundation  have been highly critical of the bill. Sunlight Foundation says audits have shown that 62% of Illinois government has substantially failed to respond to FOIA requests. On top of current non-compliance, giving public agencies a legitimate avenue to further delay on requests does not look good.

Past abuses of FOIA requests include a prominent lawsuit involving a citizen who wanted to know how much the local school superintendent was being paid.  The District fought the request on the grounds that this was personal information, only after several years delay did the courts decide the request had to be honored. If the requester had been interested in finding out what all the public employees were paid, he could have been delayed from finding out practically indefinitely.

Under HB 1716 as written, a citizen who is unfamiliar with the process who makes seven FOIA requests can be labeled a “frequent requester” when seven forms are filled out in a single day. A savvier operator will combine requests onto a single form and accomplish the same thing without being labeled.

The idea behind freedom of information is to make available as much information on what those in power are doing as the public is interested in. Limiting that ability serves only those in power.

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