By:  Diane Benjamin

I wonder why nobody ever noticed CIRA was violating the Open Meetings Act?

Illinois has a HUGE problem with too many units of government, the Central Illinois Regional Airport being just one.  Since I didn’t want to FOIA them every month for information or just be on their email list, I filed a Request for Review with the Attorney General’s Office.  This one is easy, so it didn’t take them long to act.

The AG contacted CIRA with questions about their transparency, leave it to lawyers to respond with 67 pages:  40774 PB resp to FI-1

Meanwhile, CIRA is beginning to comply with the Open Meetings Act and now has information on their website:  http://www.cira.com/

See the TAB labeled “About CIRA” – page down.

CIRA has budgeted $50,000 for a new website.  Guys:  What you have is an information site.  It isn’t complicated, it also shouldn’t cost anywhere near $50,000!  What you have now is attractive.  I think it was done with Frontpage, that’s equivalent to WordPress now.  The goal of any website is to provide information fast.  You don’t need to go $50,000 fabulous.

But, since the budget figure is out, I predict bids around $49,500.

I don’t believe CIRA was attempting to hide anything.  I think they were just unaware of the law.

Following up on this story from last week:  https://blnnews.com/2016/04/15/more-on-the-airport/

Carl Olson forwarded a debt list to me.  Yes, they have debt:  $24,310,000.  See the list here:  [email protected]_20160418_124146-1