The recent and long time awaited for new Illinois Freedom of Information Act (Senate Bill 189), passed by the state’s Senate now awaits being signed into law by the Governor. If signed, the new law will take effect starting 1 January 2010, hopefully radically changing the situation with the current state of government records openness for public inspection that is regarded by vast number of the state’s residents as unsatisfactory.

The issues has a really long history, and Illinois seems to have been the most reluctant state regarding the development of its own legal regulations governing the access to the Public Records held by the state’s repositories. Just consider the fact that Illinois was the last of the US states to enact its own FOIA as late as in 1983, 17 years after the federal Freedom of Information Act was signed into law by the US President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 4, 1966.

Since its adoption in 1988 the Illinois FOIA law received much criticism from the behalf of citizens and public rights advocacy organizations for being too easy to manipulate, especially with no penalty risk for the officials due to the absence of any penalty provision. The year 1999 action by group of the Illinois journalists confirmed those concerns did have valid grounds. A large group of journalists then engaged in a statewide campaign simultaneously requesting public records from county governments in all 102 counties across the sate of Illinois. From all requests for viewing public records made by journalists statewide, nearly 70% of the requesters were told to come later, while 25% of the government units just refused to release the public records under different pretexts.

Since then several public activist groups kept campaigning to amend the existing FOIA fighting to force the governments change the way they handle the requests for public records. Their efforts had been largely in vain, though, until the Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan started backing the action several years ago.

Now the community believes that after the Senate voted for the new law, there will be no opposition from behalf of the Governor Patt Quinn and the new FOIA will be signed by him. If the law is enacted, it will be mandated that every government outlet across the state designates a special official responsible for freedom of information related issues as seen by the new law. All of those officers are to undergo proper training at the attorney general’s office.

With new law coming in effect the government bodies will be obligated to respond requests within five days since the request was filed. But the most important change about the new Freedom of Information Act is that it provides for introduction of a public access counselor position in the attorney general’s office along with definition of the wide range of power of that official needed to help citizens in government public records access with the authority of issuing binding opinion and even bringing case to court. Unfortunately, the clause providing for criminal punishment for non-compliance with the new law by government officials and employees was removed from the law in the process of hearing.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/law-articles/illinois-making-government-records-as-public-as-they-should-be-1019998.html

Author: C. Dyson

About the Author:

C. Dyson is an educator and researcher of the legal matters pertinent to both privacy protection and the right of people for the access to unbiased information you can trust, so every citizen could make informed and law compliant decision, be it in public or business domain. He also writes on hot topics and disputable issues concerning personal safety. His resource dedicated to background check techniques.

Technorati Tags: Crime, Employment, Government Records, Investigation, Labour Law, Law, Legal, People, Society

Check prison records and be safe

US government prison records can be found at the US department of justice site which has all the information one needs to know about prisons, crime, criminals, offenders and detailed statistics. Several sites offer legitimate information of all government prison records for a fee. You have to register for a fee and for premium membership, have to pay more money to peek at the government prison records.

You can search all types of criminal records by state and county. Earlier, it was a big hassle going around to police departments and government agencies to look for criminal records when you needed to do a verification or background check on a person. Usually a background check is done by an employer when he or she is scanning a job applicant’s record. It is imperative the employer checks out as the person who applied for the job requires taking up a critical responsibility in the organization.

Similarly, for Court Records too, people had to face problems earlier as they were required to fill up many forms and make several visits to the concerned offices before they could get information on cases and court rulings in a particular case. This has become more simplified these days with the advent of the internet. People also need to do background checks when they are in business. They need to check the records of their business partners or suppliers and buyers to know if there are any criminal records against them.

It is wiser to know about a person’s record beforehand rather than risk financial losses or theft later on.

Government prison records are invaluable these days in identification as the times are different and criminal activities have taken newer forms that are usually unknown and seem quite complicated even to the justice and police departments. Identification checks have become vital these days with the war on terror waged by the United States.

Court cases and rulings are vital information not only for those checking out on prospective business partners and employers doing background checks, but, even attorneys and lawyers are required to frequently refer to them for future court cases. Tenant identification and background checks are vital these days as trust levels have fallen in these changing times. But in some cases some government prison records are not available for public viewing when there is an ongoing case or Criminal Records of some individuals need to be protected for security purposes.

US government prison records also contain information about inmates and entencing, captured criminals, and wanted criminals. Information about sex offenders is always available in US government as well as databases of federal
states. These people are a real danger to society and their records, when they are made available to the public, serve as an exercise in caution. 

Technorati Tags: Government Criminal Records, government records online

Yes it is true! That is what the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) says. If the government records are laid side by side the pages held by NARA would have to circle the world 57 times. As it is not at all possible to get these mammoth government record holdings digitalized the NARA has made only a very small portion of it available online, mainly for those interested in research.

Otherwise there are tools and methods by which those interested can search. Records are made available by the government to those interested. For Online Records that the government makes available, they need to check and employ the tools to find out what they want.

In a democracy, it is imperative that Government Records are made available to every citizen of the US to monitor their government as well as ensure that is government is properly accountable. Policymakers all over the US always face a daunting task of maintaining a precarious balance between the right to information of the public and the right to secrecy of the individual.

Contrary to popular misconceptions about government records, it is not only about records and documents of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Government documents carry virtually all information about the citizens from the time they were born, were eligible for a driver’s license, got married, bought a house and filed a suit.

Lots of documents have been created over the years and kept as government records ranging from those living to their parents, grand parents or great grand parents who had become US citizens for the first time or, about them if they had served in any of the two World Wars or the any other war for the United States. It is said that of all the information created by NARA and available as government records, barely 1-3% are considered to have some legal or historical value that were kept forever.

Otherwise, the rest are not available as they are of little value and importance to the public. Government record keeping is like documents and papers you consider worth keeping with you when you move house. Most of them are scrapped while some are carried by you to your new home and also treasured by your children and grandchildren as you presently keep those dating back to your parents, grandparents or some belonging to earlier generations in your family tree.

Researches have myriad interests in looking into government records dating back many years. People after their own roots may want to know about their past generation, something about their family history or some other social thesis of social interest that may go into a book they are writing. Others may require proving military service of a veteran.

To all of them, the NARA makes available records that they have carefully preserved over the years. 

Technorati Tags: Government Records, NARA, record holdings