The Chicago Way: Daley’s Online Transparency Ploy

Mayor Richard Daley will publish in the city's website reporter's requests of documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Jose More/Chicago News Cooperative

Mayor Richard M. Daley shrugged and insisted to reporters last week that his latest effort at “enhanced Web transparency” — publishing Freedom of Information Act requests as they are filed — was all about better government. As the mayor tends to say so often: Let’s be realistic.

Local news media have long pushed the notoriously opaque Daley administration to open City Hall’s filing cabinets wider and more readily. And now that a recent change in Illinois’s “sunshine law” requires every government body to keep a log of requests for public documents, the City of Chicago has decided to go a step beyond the mandate and publish who is asking for which files. No other Illinois city has taken such a step.

The mayor is apparently relishing the opportunity to have reporters see what it is like to be, as he says, “scrootened.” Thanks to a new feature added this week to www.cityofchicago.org, the activities of hypercompetitive investigative reporters are exposed for the public — and rivals — to view the moment they begin following up on tips about the Daley administration’s activities.

For those who have not enjoyed the thrust and parry of information requests with the city, here is what it is like:

When I once filed a request for the mayor’s personal appointment calendar, his aides said they could not provide the information because it would take too long to delete the personal contact information of Mr. Daley’s bodyguards from the documents.

A request for a detailed list of Mr. Daley’s travel expenses related to his failed bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics resulted in the explanation that it would be too much work to provide a complete accounting.

Early last year, when cities were competing for a share of more than $800 billion in federal stimulus money, Mr. Daley alone among city mayors refused to release his wish list. After the mayor said at a news conference that he had opted against transparency because he did not want to endure news media criticism of the list while his petition to Washington was pending, my then-colleagues at The Chicago Tribune demanded the list under the Freedom of Information Act.

In response, the city said no such list existed. After months of legal wrangling, Jacquelyn Heard, the mayor’s press secretary, said Mr. Daley was “teasing” when he told reporters he was hiding the information.

The new postings on the Web site include the name and organization of the person making the request, what is being sought and when the request was filed.

If the mayor’s transparency initiative is truly designed to use the city’s Web site to better inform the public about the way Chicago works, then the city could go even further and post the administration’s responses to the requests.

The public would learn a great deal from a new city policy that shows what information the mayor releases — and refuses to release.