Legislative Action                                                    

"The power of the press" may be a maxim ingrained in the minds of many Americans. But when it comes to the Illinois legislative process, the press must fight for what it wants just like any other interest group. And — like many such groups — it's not always successful.

Witness efforts of the Illinois Press Association and the Illinois News Broadcasters Association over the last three years. Along with other groups, they have been pushing for measures that would broaden the Illinois Open Meetings Act and the state's Freedom of Information Act.

For three years they have negotiated with opponents of the measures, including the Illinois Municipal League and several municipal clerks, to craft bills both "sides" can stomach. Yet as the General Assembly adjourned, the bills sat languishing in the Senate Executive Committee; they'd been approved by the House last spring.

Among other things, the measures would have required public officials to post agendas 48 hours before all meetings. Verbatim records, either taped recordings or court reporters' transcripts, would have had to be kept for any closed meeting. And clerks would have been prohibited from charging citizens a fee to inspect public documents. Proposed penalties were fines of no more than $100 for first-time violations and $500 for each subsequent violation.

This may not mean much to Joe or Mary Citizen, who may not want to follow details of any of the state's 1,274 municipal governments' activities. But supporters said the measures would have made public officials more accountable to the people who elected them. They said verbatim transcripts of closed meetings are needed to monitor closed meetings to make sure business discussed there falls within the Open Meeting Act's intentions. Exceptions to the act include meetings about employees' salaries and discussions of the hiring or firing of employees.

Opponents said the measures would create a burden for local officials, who would have had to buy recording equipment and make storage arrangements for tapes and transcripts. They also said they were afraid people would be discouraged from running for public office, fearing frank discussions during closed meetings would end up in the public's hands.

Although these bills would have moved Illinois up from its middle-to-low end of the pack when it comes to states' open government laws, they weren't exactly revolutionary. They didn't even call for reducing the 20-plus reasons for which public bodies may close their meetings.

The state of Iowa already has on its books a measure requiring verbatim records of closed meetings, notes David Bennett. As executive director of the Illinois Press Association, he testified in favor of these measures before legislative committees.

Open meeting requirements are far more strict in some other states. Take Florida, for example, which Bennett describes as "about as good as it gets" when it comes to sunshine laws. There, the state constitution holds that at the state level the public must be given notice and be allowed to sit in on all meetings involving three or more elected officials discussing public business. That means reporters sit in on leadership summits, party caucuses — all the juicy meetings reporters in Illinois are shut out of, left clamoring at the door for any tidbit of information the meetings' participants care to share.

Not that there aren't ways around the stipulations in Florida. Staff members, for instance, may end up bargaining state officials' business with each other. Or lawmakers simply ignore the public notice requirement — especially during the harried closing days of the legislature. But the state's constitution says that any time reporters or other members of the public come upon a meeting of elected officials discussing state business, they can make themselves welcome.

This entire subject leads to questions about how members of the media are supposed to go about trying to change laws that govern the way they do their jobs. In general, the media are thought of as observers, reporting on but not affecting the outcome of public events and policy. Not that there's never been a reporter or editor who has gone to bat for an issue by trying to wield influence over elected officials — or threatened an elected official with the media outlet's wrath if he or she did not act a certain way.

In fact, that used to be a fairly common way of doing things. A quarter of a century ago, many reporters in the state Capitol, for example, effectively served dual roles as lobbyists for their news organizations. They actively pushed for passage or defeat of legislation — and not only on those bills that would directly affect the press.

But they see a much less activist role for the press today. Bennett agrees. "We use whatever real or perceived influence we have," he said. "We use the clout that newspapers have with government to influence their points of view. When I go in and argue our case before the legislature, I say that I'm there representing newspapers of the state. Politicians generally are not quick to try to incur the wrath of news reporters."

A big difference between the Illinois Press Association and other organizations that lobby the legislature is that Bennett's group doesn't contribute to politicians' campaigns.

"We don't have political action committees," he said. "I don't give a dime to anybody. And I've never threatened any politician by saying something so obnoxious as: 'You better support what we want or you'll hear about it in the paper back home.' We fight hard but we use grassroots efforts."

He's more disappointed than surprised by the fate of the failed bills he supported last year. "This is a state that is not partial to doing a lot of things out in the open," he said. "We were either the 49th or 50th to get a Freedom of Information Act in the country. We may have beat Mississippi by a few days in enacting it."

But it's not a scenario that's going to make him back down: "It's an election year, and we're going to ask lawmakers to stand up and be counted on this issue. We're going to do whatever we can to draw attention to it. We're going to turn up the heat." *

24/December 1993/Illinois Issues