The Rostrum

ONE OF THE great catchwords of the l970's is "accountability." Growing partly from concern about the real Watergate and a host of state and local "watergates" and partly from distress over increased governmental costs, the concept of "accountability" has grown and flourished in recent years. Unfortunately, the term has such a high moral tone that the public official who takes issue with either some aspects of the concept of accountability or with some of the processes and procedures developed to "insure accountability" is highly suspect. The official who does not embrace any and all acts designed to insure accountability obviously "has something to hide" and so these acts are the subject of muttering, but are rarely attacked from a public rostrum.

The excesses
Let it first be proclaimed that the public has an obvious right to an accounting of how public funds are spent, to an evaluation of the results of the expenditure of public funds, and to a knowledge of the votes of public officers when decisions affecting public funds and public agencies are made. These basic elements of accountability are necessary and have been necessary for as long as there have public agencies and public funds. As one moves beyond these basic elements, however, it is easy to move from accountability to curiosity, to advocacy, to propaganda; it is easy to move from an honest interest in accountability to a desire to meddle in or to second guess about the work of public officials.

A number of examples of "excess accountability" exist in higher education in Illinois. These range from (1) conflict of interest laws (which virtually prohibit the service of any active executive of any large corporation on a public university governing board); (2) through requirements that unsalaried members of governing and coordinating boards file complex statements of economic interest to be eligible to donate time to public service; and (3) to the absolute impossibility of governing board members and administrators studying issues with the same privacy permitted legislators through the caucus system. On the administrative side, accountability requires ever increasing detail in financial record keeping and in financial reporting as every interest group -- large or small -- demands successfully to receive financial and other statistical information designed to serve the needs of interest groups rather than of the institution. Thus, enrollment and employment data must be shuffled and reshuffled to meet requirements at both the state and federal levels -- requirements which differ by level as well as by agency on the same level. Reports designed for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare do not meet the requirements of the U.S. Department of Labor, and neither report meets the requirements of the Department of Defense. The recently dismissed "Sears Suit" was correct in claiming that some of the accountability demands emanating from different agencies of government actually do conflict with each other -- to abide by one agency's rules, one must violate the rules of another agency.

Part of the problem is determining to whom a public agency is supposed to be accountable. A public university, such as the University of Illinois, is a creature of the legislature and is responsible to the people of Illinois through the General Assembly and through its governing board as established by the General Assembly. Both the executive branch and the judicial branch of state government have responsibilities for and authority related to such a university. But then accountability proliferation begins to set in: committees of the General Assembly and various staffs of such committees; legislative commissions and boards -- both permanent and temporary; executive branch agencies with permanence -- such as the Bureau of the Budget or the Capital Development Board -- and some with less permanence -- task forces on the future or on governmental organization; citizens groups; the media; and a whole host of individuals through the courts demand some form of accountability. To respond in the negative is "to have something to hide"; to respond accurately to every request costs money and leads to expansion of offices and staffs so often described as "administrative fat."

Reverse accountability
Accountability as a concept and as a process is in need of an "accountability review." The goal is honestyand efficiency as public officials and public agencies spend public dollars to meet public purposes. To the extent that requests on behalf of accountability contribute to that goal, those requests should be met fully and promptly. But to the extent that those requests represent idle curiosity (or even an active curiosity) or are designed to serve the needs of the person or group making the request rather than the purposes of the agency, they are themselves a waste of time, a waste of money and a diversion of your tax dollar and mine from the purposes for which they have been collected. The time is here for the accountability people to meet some of the accountability tests they so willingly impose upon others.

August 1979 / Illinois Issues / 35

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