One “meh” and one “wow”
Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Frankly, I’m not all that fired up about the House’s vote to override the governor’s amendatory veto of a FOIA bill. The General Assembly approved legislation last spring that exempted state employee personnel evaluations from Freedom of Information Act requests. The governor AV’d the bill limiting the exemptions to police.
The State Journal-Register editorialized against any override…
“Having been around this kind of litigation for many years, I would think that just about anything about an employee will be argued to be part of an evaluation,” says Don Craven, attorney for the Illinois Press Association. “The lack of definition of what is precluded from being given out to the public is troublesome.”
Even under the previous Freedom of Information Act, standard evaluations were considered public documents through ample legal precedent. Yet only after Illinois passed its new FOIA did we see a push for an exemption.
“AFSCME just earned themselves a two-year, no-layoff agreement from the state of Illinois, which is fairly unprecedented in a $15 billion deficit year,” says Josh Sharp, the IPA’s director of government relations. “If you’re going to give these employees a two-year guarantee of employment, we don’t think it’s too much for the public to ask that we have a certain idea of how they are performing as employees.”
The paper also published an op-ed by the BGA…
Arguments to conceal performance evaluations hinge on fears that making those evaluations public will discourage managers from giving honest evaluations, or that the evaluation process will be used as a method of public humiliation to retaliate against unwanted employees. But these reasons only highlight the dysfunction of our personnel system, and do not speak to the legitimacy of the people’s right to access information about their government.
My own opinion is that allowing these evaluations to be made public would, indeed, be used to undercut unwanted employees. But I really don’t care one way or another. Uphold it or not. No biggie to me.
* This, however, is quite troublesome to me…
Aside from the risks inherent in private equity and real estate investments, some pension experts have raised concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding these bets.
Under a 2005 rewrite of Illinois’ Freedom of Information Act, public pension funds are not required to provide basic information about what assets are being purchased, the fine print of contracts or, most importantly, how assets are valued.
The Tribune was able to identify some assets underlying these investments only by reviewing thousands of pages of pension fund documents and scouring industry newsletters and Web sites.
That’s pretty darned scary. Leaving everything to the experts and locking up trillions of dollars in black box financial gadgets got this nation into a huge mess. The pension funds ought to made to open the books.
- Leroy - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 12:10 pm:
Anyone know how Illinois’ pension transparency laws compare to other states?
Just curious…
- 47th Ward - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 12:21 pm:
First let me say I know next to nothing about how the various pension funds manage their investments. But wouldn’t greater transparency require the investment firms to divulge proprietary information on how they operate? Would that discourage some firms from seeking these funds?
I realize that may be the point of the legislation, but an unintended consequence might be fewer firms bidding for pension fund investments.
- John Bambenek - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 12:29 pm:
Public money, public accountability. That simple.
And investment strategies aren’t that particularly secret. For the most part, insiders know what everyone else owns. Owning isn’t really the trick. It’s knowing when to buy and sell and you aren’t going to get valuable information about that reading it 6 months later in some government report.
- Amalia - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 12:29 pm:
Personnel issues should remain private. It’s difficult on management…..not commenting while some employee without factual backup for a lawsuit yells at the top of their lungs, for example, is very difficult. But it’s for the good of the process that it remains between manager and employee and process.
On the pension funds, there should be lots more info available. I’d start with making more public the names of those sitting on the pension boards. to the point of a discussion yesterday, are any of these board members compensated? Take a look at some of the names in Cook County and it reads like an old school Stroger playbook….Fratto. Also, the various pension funds have different requirements, on things like how individuals are compensated for bringing business to the pension fund. It’s all over the place.
does Cindy Canary’s outfit have a one stop shop for pension fund info? compare, contrast the methods, the returns, and be astounded at the operations.
- cassandra - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 12:36 pm:
Fund managers are gamblers, pure and simple, and well paid for their gambles whatever the outcome. If you have to be in the market, you are better off over the long term in a low-cost index fund. Like that’ll ever happen with public pension $$$$$$$.
As to state employee evaluations, I’m not sure that as currently conducted they would be very useful except for the occasional muckraker or the merely curious, hardly worth the effort of changing the law.
What we need is more information on how state bureaucrats are operating in the aggregate as well as the particular. Some school districts (LA for ex) have been looking at value-added analysis of teachers as a way of evaluating performance over a school year. If similar types of analysis could be applied to state employee performance, that could be very useful to taxpayers who pay the hefty bills for these employees’ compensation.
- Cook County Commoner - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 12:38 pm:
Proprietary trading strategies should be easy to protect. The real pushback here is to protect the pension plans from explaining how large slabs of pension money ended up in the hands of companies with strong political affiliations. The next avoid-at-all-costs embarrassment would be justifying the fees charged by the investment firms. And then there is the question of why there are around 600 public employee pension plans in Illinois, each needing a cadre of paid trustees, administrators and outside money managers. And lets not forget to consider why the pension plans cannot manage the funds themselves: Because that eliminates the opportunities for the “friends and family” investing professionals who make mountains more on percentage fee based charges than a salary. The sooner we realize that puplic employee pension plans are the modern era’s replacement for greasy envelopes stuffed with cash being passed to politicians at darkened restaurants, the sooner we can start administering CPR to the state and local governments.
- wordslinger - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 12:43 pm:
–… to provide basic information about what assets are being purchased, the fine print of contracts or, most importantly, how assets are valued.–
Didn’t we just see this movie?
The rest of the business world and the political world need to get a handle on the international finance racket. They have far too much power.
When they bet right, we win, and they win huge. When they bet wrong, we lose, and they win huge.
They need a lot of transparency and adult supervision.
- CircularFiringSquad - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 12:56 pm:
It is about time someone brought some common sense to FOIA
Meanwhile the media hand wringing on pensions can only reveal how worthless the media has become. This has been a problem since the early 80’s when the public employees got unions, aggressive salary negotiators and no effort to psre back pension benefits.
When not focused on celebrity mope gossip news the media opted to pick on legislative pensions — the smallest fund — rather than the big tamales.
memo to cook county commoner — the systems worked better when big slabs of money went to the connected rather the quant/geeks on the East Coast
- Irish - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 1:02 pm:
If my performance evaluation is to be public for the whole year then every elected officeholder must make their financial disclosure statements public for the whole year, not three days. Eh, PQ?
- siriusly - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 1:36 pm:
47 - I don’t agree. “But wouldn’t greater transparency require the investment firms to divulge proprietary information on how they operate? Would that discourage some firms from seeking these funds?”
They can certainly disclose a ton more than they do without giving away “trade secrets” and frankly there aren’t any. Any pension funds that are supported by public funding should be just as transparent and accountable as any mutual fund or stock. Their investment decision making processes and decisions should be fully transparent and publicly available. if they have something to hide - it is probably because they don’t want us to know what the admin fees, kickbacks and strange investments are.
Pensions are killing us. Now is the time to require better disclosure - it would be better for all public employees / retirees and better for the public as well.
- dupage dan - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 1:37 pm:
Many state employees were upset when the salaries were made public. The sky didn’t fall. Now evaluations may be made public. While there may be some risk of them being used to embarrass someone, I wouldn’t have a problem, as a state employee, with them being posted. There isn’t much in these things unless you are a complete buffoon and, perhaps, shouldn’t be employed with anyone, let alone the state. I agree w/Rich…..meh.
Re the pensions - it would be a good thing if there was better oversite in the various programs. I think more transparency the better. I am not an expert in this but would like to think that it would be good if some 3rd party folk could check things out. Good for the taxpayer as well as the pensioner.
- jane - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 1:47 pm:
Merit comp evaluations have at times become political or personnal in nature - particularly since 2003. They may have not resemblence to what is happening - and - there may not have been any recourse.
- Chicago Cynic - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 2:39 pm:
The problem with this type of disclosure is vividly on display in today’s story. For their first 3-7 years, venture funds invariably show negative returns. And even for those that succeed, there are sometimes different standards for evaluating the funds. The result is a confusing hodgepodge of extremely misleading information.
Today’s Trib story butchers the numbers by using two completely different analytical methods to compare funds. SBA funds like Hopewell use a dramatically lower method which fails to take into account most accepted measures of company performance. Under this standard, a company with a valuation of $15 mil is only valued at 3.
Trib calls Hopewell a bottom quartile fund. Using the same generally accepted accounting principals method used for non-SBA funds, Hopewell is top 20%.
While I’m all over disclosure, I would simply caution that California tried this and it created enormous problems which led to changes. Simply put, extreme care is required when messing with the private equity world.
- Left Leaner - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 2:44 pm:
It’s our money. We should get to see what’s being done with it. Period.
Those who don’t want us to see what’s being done with it hold that view for disingenuous reasons. Period.
- Jake from Elwood - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 3:12 pm:
This exception must just be for the state funds. Police and fire pension funds have no such exclusion from FOIA. Indeed, they are required to provide alot of information on an annual basis to the underlying municipal entity. This statutory change took place in August 2008.
- Ain't No Justice - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 4:53 pm:
As far as the public employee evaluations go, I am against it because…politics plays a part like everything else. I have seen lazy hacks get superior evaluation while hard working employees get average or below. As Jane posted earlier…it just depends on who you are. Just my two cents.
- BigTwich - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 4:55 pm:
The SJR says,
“standard evaluations were considered public documents through ample legal precedent.”
I do not remember that. Is that an accurate statement?
- Reformer - Thursday, Nov 18, 10 @ 8:51 pm:
While lots of suburban Republican House members voted with labor to override, Madigan voted No.
- Capital Curmudgeon - Friday, Nov 19, 10 @ 11:33 am:
My comment’s showing up in Safari but not in Firefox so am reposting here:
What’s your source on the pension info? I don’t recall a rewrite of FOIA in 2005. It was rewritten in 09, which took effect this year.
I see a lot of misconceptions about the personnel issue. One poster was worried about disclosure opening the agency up to lawsuits because something was put in the file that wasn’t backed up factually. That potential exists regardless because employees are entitled to view their own personnel files.
Another commented that “Now evaluations may be made public.” The evaluations are already public. The legislation is to close them. There have been only a handful of FOIA requests for personnel evaluation out of the thousands reviewed by the AG’s office. The legislation attempts to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
An exemption to FOIA like this one is, pure and simple, a way to sweep more dirt under the rug. If an employee has a stellar record, he has nothing to fear. If he has a terrible record, then of course he doesn’t want the public to know it.
People fear that managers won’t be honest if they know people are looking at the evaluations. I believe just the opposite to be true. The manager will be held more accountable. If he has an employee with a problem whom he personally likes, he will have to accurately document the problems. Often times, managers don’t give bad reviews because they want the person to be able to move on. Shining a public light on the evaluations increases accountability.
Schools already have an exemption and it’s been well documented how the “pass the trash.”
As a citizen, if you get beat up by a police officer, wouldn’t you want to know if that officer had been reprimanded several times in the past for unnecessary use of force?
If your kid comes home and says his teacher made a sexual advance, wouldn’t you like to know whether the teacher has had other complaints of that nature? Some will say that’s why we elect a school board to look at those things and do the right thing. But if the cash-strapped school board is looking at a $500,000 expense to try to fire the teacher, it may not do the right thing. As taxpayers, we ought to be able to take a look ourselves.
Privacy is a hot button these days in our new digital world. But these evaluations are not about privacy. They’re about the performance of public duties by public employees paid for by public tax dollars. There is nothing private about them.