Beginning at the September 9th Village of Schaumburg board meeting, the Schaumburg Freedom Coalition (SFC) has been proposing comprehensive transparency reforms for our Village government.  

The SFC has repeatedly stated that the Village of Schaumburg should implement a comprehensive transparency program that would inject sunlight into the budget process and open up the books in an online searchable database. The SFC transparency reform proposals include:  

• The Village of Schaumburg’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFR’s),  annual budgets, department budgets, and business type-activity budgets, should be posted online in a searchable format;
• A searchable database of all the Village of Schaumburg’s expenditures including, but not limited to, all contracts, vendors, grants and itemized with a clear description. In addition, all expenditures should have a detailed account of the payment’s purpose and who authorized the payment;
• A database of all current Village of Schaumburg employees and individual consultants, sorted separately by name, agency, and position title, listing for each of their current pay rates and year-to-date salary and benefits;
• TIF district transparency of all revenues and detailed expenditures;
• A database of all Village contracts, sorted separately by contractor name, awarding officer or agency, contract value, and goods or services provided.

The Village Board and Mayor Al Larson has opposed all of our our transparency reforms for the last 5 months. In fact, Village board member Tom Dailly stated that he was “insulted” at our transparency proposals, that transparency would “confuse” the citizens of Schaumburg, and they would “ask a lot of questions”. 

The Schaumburg Freedom Coalition asks Mr. Dailly, Mr. Larson, and the rest of the Village Board, how can a citizen possibly be an educated voter in a democracy without transparency? Do they prefer that the citizens remain ignorant to what is going on in the government of Schaumburg?

Frustrated with the road blocks to comprehensive transparency reform, the Schaumburg Freedom Coalition has created its own transparency page, where we are posting documents we receive through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Less than 48 hours after the Schaumburg Freedom Coalition launched the Schaumburg Transparency Project web page, and posted key documents online, the Village of Schaumburg followed suit and posted the same documents to their own publication website. 

These documents include 4-years of the Schaumburg Treasurer’s Report and two additional years (2008 &2009) of the Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center budgets.

Here is a January 3rd Internet Archive of Schaumburg’s publication website prior to the Schaumburg Freedom Coalition’s Freedom of Information Act Request and posting on this site.

While the increased transparency is certainly welcome, it is saddening to see the Village of Schaumburg only respond to our pleas only when they were shamed by bad press highlighting their obstruction of transparency and resistance to reforms.  

Reason and common sense arguments in support of transparency seem to not make a difference to the Schaumburg Village Board and Mayor. They have been dragging their feet on transparency for 5 months now. However, a little bad press and competition from the Schaumburg Freedom Coalition and now documents are being posted online in a blink of an eye. Why couldn’t this have been done sooner?

Additionally, since the Village of Schaumburg learned of the Schaumburg Transparency Project, they have begun to treat our outstanding Freedom of Information Act requests very differently. Repeatedly, the Village has responded to basic salary requests with a “no such document exists” response, in violation of the Freedom of Information Act laws in Illinois.

Disbursement documents (expenditures) that they previously emailed to us in PDF form are now only available “as hard copy”. Schaumburg is insisting that Board packets, provided online for free by the Village of Hoffman Estates, can be obtained only “as a hard copy” and that each Board packet will cost in excess of $20.

Regardless of the numerous obstacles placed in front of the Schaumburg Freedom Coalition in obtaining basic government documents, we will continue to obtain more information about the Village of Schaumburg and place those documents online.

Schaumburg taxpayer’s deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent.

Update: Additional FOIA documents have been obtained by the Schaumburg of Freedom Coalition and appear on our Schaumburg Transparency Project page. 

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