Madigan’s Office Stonewalls Key Facts of “Operation Guardian”
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s Freedom of Information (FOI) web page boldly proclaims: ENSURING OPEN AND HONEST GOVERNMENT.
The person responsible for ensuring all Illinois agencies comply with FOI requests is the Public Access Counselor (PAC). The PAC is an attorney in the AG’s office named Cara Smith. However, when Cara Smith is not wearing her PAC hat, she is Lisa Madigan’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy/Communications. In other words, Cara Smith is Spinner in Chief for Lisa Madigan and also responsible for ENSURING OPEN AND HONEST GOVERNMENT.
Florida, “The Sunshine State,” used to run an ad campaign with the tagline “The rules are different here.” Illinois is like that, except for the “sunshine” part. Illinois does not have to advertise “the rules are different here.” Illinois and corruption are synonyms. Only in Illinois would the AG’s top spinner also be in charge of controlling the release of information about the AG’s office in response to FOI requests.
OPERATION GUARDIAN STONEWALLING. Madigan’s office issued a press release on September 20th that over 120 persons with outstanding warrants had been identified during Operation Guardian. On September 22nd, I submitted an FOI request asking for information about the 120 persons – what were the crimes charged, how many were arrested and how many were left in the homes. I also asked for information about media and other groups Madigan met with during Operation Guardian, and also about activities by her staff.
I put in the FOI request to get some sunshine on two key points:
- Since nursing homes do not have the ability to check for open warrants (which was the basis for the “120 felons” press release) it is misleading at best to call this aspect of Operation Guardian a “compliance check.”
- Madigan’s traveling “compliance” road show was campaigning on the public dime.
In response to my FOI request, Madigan’s office sent me copies of press releases, along with documents saying why they won’t release some items and others need more consideration.
But this is Illinois: the rules are different here. And those rules won’t change until we throw out the people who made them.
