Have you ever seen the budget for your city, school district, or Will county? I am willing to guess that you have not, even if you have tried. I have tried and found local governments want to hide their financial documents and to deter anyone from seeing them. They want to keep collecting more and more in taxes, but never want to tell us how they actually spend OUR money.
I tried to see Crest Hill's budget several months ago and was treated to quite an adventure. I went to City Hall and asked to see a copy of the most recent city budget. I was told that the person who would have that had left early for the weekend and to come back on Monday. I agreed to return on Monday and left written information as to who I was and what I wanted to view. I returned the next week and the information still was not available. The following day I came in once again and this time the information was ready. However, I was handed a set of printouts that appeared to be a report of year to date expenses and revenues compared to the current budget. This document lacked any explanation and was far from being clear. I asked if there were any additional financial documents available and was told that they were not.
At this point, I sent a written request to the City Treasurer asking to view copies of the current budget as passed by the City Council, the most recent audit of the city, and the most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). I received no response. Two weeks later, I sent the same written request to the Mayor, City Clerk, and the alderpersons for the ward I live in. A week later, I got a call from the Mayor's office and was able to set up a time to view the CAFR.
This was an acceptable outcome for me because the CAFR was fairly recent and contained everything I wanted to see. However, it is amazing how much effort it took to see this document. I believe that the responsible thing to do would be to have copies of all reports, budgets, and other significant documents available at City Hall and the local library. I have yet to find a library that is not willing to add city documents to their reference collection. In fact, the Crest Hill library has planning documents from 40 years ago for Crest Hill, but very little from recent years.
I wish this was an isolated event that applied only to my request in Crest Hill. However, I have watched Alderman John Vershay ask the Crest Hill City Treasurer for a listing of the bills being paid at each council meeting. The treasurer however is behind by a number of weeks so he expects the council to approve paying the bills and not being told what they were for until a month or more later. And when confronted he has flatly refused to provide this information to an Alderman. No wonder he is so unresponsive to citizens. A year ago I had a similar experience with the Plainfield School District when I wanted information about their bond referendum to build additional schools. They only took 2 weeks and 3 written contacts to provide me the information I asked for.
One must really wonder why our local governments do not want to share financial information with the public. They have no problems taxing us, but they seem to have more difficulty telling us what they do with our money.
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