Who are you to be questioning us? Is anybody shocked the attitude exists?

I have written about enough governmental entities throughout the years to know that officials really don’t like being questioned.

Questioning the coppers? None of ya bizness!

By anybody! About anything!

SO I CAN’T say I’m shocked to learn of the Chicago Tribune report detailing how the Chicago Police Board did a pseudo-investigation about everyone who, in the mindset of the coppers, had the nerve to think they could speak out at their public meetings.

Those laws requiring that governmental entities do their business in public? That doesn’t really mean people are enthused about the possibility of having their actions scrutinized. Or as one-time Mayor Richard M. Daley once put it, “Go scrutinize yourself. I get scrootined every day.”

In fact, I don’t doubt that police in particular don’t want anybody else looking all that closely to the ways and means by which they enforce the laws. Which, sadly enough, are just like sausages – it would sicken you to know some of the things that occur in the name of justice.

So according to the Tribune, it seems that some 60 people who filed the requests to speak before the Police Board were actually investigated prior to being permitted to speak.

THE POLICE KNEW in advance if there was anything they could use against the individuals who wanted to speak out against police practices. I suspect that in their mindset, they were prepared to arrest anyone who tried to speak out – if they could get “the goods” on them to back up a charge.

And then we wonder why some people are less-than-trusting of law enforcement personnel in general, and uniformed police officers in particular.

The Tribune actually pointed out that the 60 people whom they found were investigated date back to 2018, but found officials admitting that the background checks, which is how police prefer to think of them, actually date back years further.

It reeks of intimidation, almost as though people are supposed to know better than to want to question the police. Which actually reminds me of a Cook County sheriff’s deputy I once knew who complained about how some officers took their authority far too seriously.

AS I REMEMBER him asking theoretically, “Who really polices the police? It’s nobody.”

Although like I said, it seems public officials in general really don’t care for scrutiny.

I remember one board of education I used to write about on a regular basis that always made a point of publicly disclosing every single person who sought information through the Freedom of Information Act, which is supposed to be about making the details of government operations easier to obtain.

But instead, this school board viewed it as a trouble-maker list; those people who had the nerve to think they were entitled to find out what was really happening. Just think how dangerous those people would have been if they had police powers just like the coppers themselves?

  -30-

The significance of tax returns, or lack thereof, in the campaign cycle

I recall the first government official who ever showed me his income tax return – it was then-Gov. Jim Edgar.

EDGAR: Not Romney or Plummer



He wasn’t running for anything specifically that year. It was just his habit to let us see the return he filed by mid-April, and it was meant to reinforce the idea that he wasn’t all that different from the rest of us.

SERIOUSLY! I RECALL his returns as showing that while the Edgars had some miniscule financial investments, they weren’t wealthy. For all practical purposes, Edgar supported his family financially on the government salaries he was paid for the various electoral offices he held during his political career.

They weren’t bad salaries. So they lived well. But no more so than many other people.

Edgar always issued the returns so routinely that they ultimately became a non-story. Yet more evidence that Edgar wasn’t the most exciting man on Planet Earth. Or even to walk the halls of the Statehouse in Springfield.

Which is why it always amazes me when would-be government officials make a big deal out of refusing to disclose their incomes. They wind up making an issue out of what should be nothing.

WHEN THE INFORMATION comes out, it gets treated as though it is a major disclosure. If it never comes out, then we wind up thinking that there is some major secret being kept from the public.

It may turn out that the information amounts to a whole lot of nothing. But the candidates treat it as though it is a major something.

Yet every campaign cycle, we get some nitwit who is determined to think that he (or she, I suppose) is special, and that we shouldn’t have some interest in their personal connections.

ROMNEY: Returns becoming an issue



Which is what we gain from getting a look at those returns. Who do they have financial connections to? How do they live? Is this a person who gives a lot to charitable causes?

IF SO, WHICH causes?

It is personal information that we can relate to, because we all ultimately have to fill out those forms.

And while I don’t expect to see anyone running for office who files the 1040EZ, we do learn something from such information.

Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations are being attacked on this ground. He has only released limited details, and claims he doesn’t want more information about himself out there because he thinks opponent Barack Obama will merely have his staff pick through the information for details that can be used against him.

HE WENT SO far as to tell the National Review, “I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort and lie about.”

My guess is that the Romney campaign wants all the distortion and lies to be told by themselves about Obama. Which when thought of that way makes Romney sound like a bully and a wimp!

Locally, we have someone else taking the same attitude. Remember Jason Plummer, the St. Louis-area guy who ran for lieutenant governor paired up with Republican William Brady?

He’s running for a seat in Congress from that part of Illinois that borders St. Louis, and he’s refusing to give up his returns. He claims they’re personal, although he released a statement that says he earns a $55,289 salary as vice president of the family-owned lumber company.

WHICH IF THAT’S all there is would be so much like many other people.

PLUMMER: Really none of our business?



Except that for people like Romney and Plummer, that isn’t all there is. They have business interests that allow them to use various exemptions.

The tales told about Romney are that he has used exemptions and tax breaks so effectively that he literally didn’t owe any federal income tax. Which is something that would make him very unusual, and reduce to rubble any claims he might try to make that he’s just a common guy, compared to “elitist” Obama.

It’s probably the same situation with regard to Plummer. The family business that he has ties to likely make him independently wealthy aside from his actual salary that he reports to the IRS. It’s a shame that he, and Romney for that matter, feels compelled to treat it as a dirty little secret.

  -30-

Secrecy in public life

Earlier this week, I covered a school board meeting for one of the suburban daily newspapers, and I encountered a woman who had never been to such a session before.

In fact, the woman had just moved to suburban Calumet City a few months earlier, after living her entire life in Chicago where she had come to accept the political culture of the city.

WHAT CAUGHT MY attention about her was her mystification about the fact that the local school board consisted of elected members, while the board of education for the Chicago Public Schools is a government body consisting of mayoral appointees.

“You go to a Chicago school board meeting, and those people act in secret. You don’t have a clue what they did, or why?,” she told me.

My initial reaction was to chuckle, because I happen to know people who think that particular school board (for the local high schools) is overly secretive, or inept, or whatever other hostile terminology their minds can concoct.

But it also popped into my mind again when I read a report by WBEZ-FM radio, which did a story about just how secretive the political culture of the Chicago Public Schools truly is.

MY OWN FIRST-HAND experience in dealing with the Chicago Public Schools as a reporter-type person is about two decades old. I haven’t been to a school board meeting in Chicago in years.

But somehow, I doubt that much has changed. In fact, if the Public Radio report is at all accurate, nothing at all has changed.

Which is why I find it interesting that incoming school board President David Vitale (NOT the incoming superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard, who will wind up being the public “face” of the schools who will get the blame – or praise – for whatever happens with regards to public education in Chicago) is willing to admit there are potential problems with the degree to which the board is “open” about doing “the people’s business.”

“My own view is that we need to be totally transparent. My bias is that the public has a right to be engaged, and I expect to follow that bias,” Vitale told WBEZ.

PERSONALLY, MY RECOLLECTIONS of dealing with Chicago Public Schools officials is of having an administration and bureaucratic structure to support it that is so large it makes the getting of information about schools activity overly-complex.

Too many people don’t know what their colleagues are doing, and often only know such a small piece of information that they don’t fully appreciate how it fits into the “big” picture.

All that means is that I believe the problem in getting a clear understanding of what is happening is because of the “ignorance” of the public officials, not any “corrupt” or “lying” nature. And when I say “ignorance,” I don’t necessarily mean they’re stupid. Just uninformed.

It is why I often joke that the act of being a news reporter covering a story is similar to putting together a jigsaw puzzle – only someone snatched away the box cover so you don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to look like when you’re done and someone may have snatched a few pieces of the puzzle when you weren’t looking.

IF THEY’RE REALLY in a nasty mood, they may slip in a couple of pieces from a different puzzle, just to confuse you.

Not that I expect the whole world to cater to my work needs (the few people who are willing to make an effort are usually the ones who are just helpful to all people in general). But when some people want to rant about the general incompetence of newsgathering organizations, perhaps it ought to be kept in mind that this is one of the factors at stake that can result in news stories with gaping holes of information or trivial tidbits or pompous rhetoric emanating from the mouths of public officials who are trying to pass themselves off as informed public servants.

And this attitude is not restricted to the Chicago Public Schools, or that one suburban school district I covered earlier this week, or any one government panel. It happens all too often at all levels of government.

So I’m curious to see how literally Vitale’s words are taken to be transparent.

BECAUSE THERE’S ALWAYS the chance that “transparency” might not tell us anything significant about the way our public officials in the school system are handling things.

It might actually just inform us about how little they truly understand what they are doing with the dollars they derive from our local property taxes.

While that kind of information is helpful for us to know on a certain level (so that perhaps we might take seriously the idea of finding better-qualified people come the next election cycle, rather than just accepting the same old people in those posts), it doesn’t help improve the level of public service.

  -30-