Transparency claims victim in primary race

Todd Stroger, former Cook County Board President in Illinois, lost his seat in the state primary elections on Tuesday. There are probably several reasons why, but one thing is for sure: his transparency record was spotty.

On January 28, a week before the primaries, Todd Stroger’s focus on transparency took the form of a promise to release his tax returns for the last two years on Thursday. He called on his opponents in Democratic Primary to do the same.

But most people were unmoved, calling that move a “publicity stunt.” Regardless, it came too late, and Stroger finished last in the four-person primary for the county board presidency.

Perhaps an earlier, more sincere commitment to transparency could have helped the former board president. During Sunshine Review’s and the Illinois Policy Institute’s collaboration on Open Illinois Week last year, Stroger returned IPI’s transparency pledged signed. Curiously, however, he inserted the word “responsibly” into the pledge twice, changing the phrases “Support any and all efforts to implement greater transparency at all levels of government” and “Support any and all efforts to implement a full, comprehensive transparency program” to:

Support any and all responsible efforts to implement greater transparency at all levels of government [...] Support any and all responsible efforts to implement a full, comprehensive transparency program.

A few moths later in July 2009, the Better Government Association filed suit in the Cook County Circuit Court saying the Stroger administration is in violation of the state’s freedom of information law for “stonewalling” the organization’s cellphone records request. The BGA had requested the cellphone records of Stroger and key staff connected with a scandal involving the hiring of an ex-convict to see how much taxpayer money was involved in resolving the scandal. The county has argued against releasing the documents saying it would be “burdensome” and interfere with an ongoing criminal investigations related to the cases.

That may have been true. Regardless, the frequent hits at the legitimacy of Stroger’s work would have benefit from a little sunshine. In the information age, public figures cannot afford to keep taxpayers in the dark: we won’t stand for it.

Transparency goes big-time

A google news search for “transparency” in the past week gets more than 24,500 results. About 5000 of these are comprised of “transparency obama,” probably spurred by his recent (re)focusing on earlier transparency promises. This accounts almost 20% of the hits for ‘transparency’ alone.

But the existence of the other 80% shows that transparency is a topic on the minds of many outside of the current news cycle.

This may be due largely in part to the fact that information is so easily accessible today, so candidates are forced the face the question: you can provide the voters information and make it available online—will you?

In state and local Illinois campaigns, this couldn’t be clearer. The state comptroller race, for example, has transparency as a common theme with one candidate being focused on a favorite of Sunshine Review staff, usability:

For the GOP, Dodge wants to make the comptroller’s Web site more user friendly, citing the difficulty of trying to find out how much a company earns from the state.

You can have all of the documents in the world on your website, but it doesn’t mean a thing if they can’t be found.

The races for the open U.S. Senate seat and for the Illinois governorship have also had the discussion turn to transparency.

Those who have been losing popularity points know to jump on the bandwagon. Todd Stroger has been asking his opponents to follow in his footsteps by releasing their tax returns. For Stroger, it may be too little too late, with opponents calling this a “publicity stunt.” Still, others should learn from his lesson, and deliver on their promises of transparency, or be prepared to pay the price on polling day. Transparency as an important issue for candidates for public office is here to stay.