By: Diane Benjamin
All elected and appointed officials are required by law to file a Statement of Economic Interest. They all have to file by May 1st of EVERY year. Filing is not only required by law, it’s vital so citizens can see the people supposedly working for them don’t have undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Each Unit of Government (cities, schools, county, etc) compiles a list of who needs to file. They should be telling those people to get it done.
That list is forwarded to the County Clerk’s office. They collect the filings and post them to a website: http://seionline.mcleancountyil.gov/public/publicsearch.aspx
Problems exist with the people who filed from the City of Bloomington. Some are missing, some didn’t file for the office they were elected to.
See a blank form here: http://www.mcleancountyil.gov/DocumentCenter/Home/View/7729
It’s not that difficult if time is taken to read the questions!
Note this statement at the bottom:
It’s always better to put more information on the form than necessary because failure to complete it properly can get people tossed from office. Yes, even in Illinois that has happened.
Since Bloomington has problems:
I filed this FOIA Request with the City:
This is the explanation given for a FULL denial:
I can only take their response as admitting guilt! They must have failed to notify their people since all of their people did not file.
I did email them stating as much. No response.
It was the job of the City Clerk to do it right. Evidently she didn’t.
Once again, laws don’t matter.
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Good work on this Diane! I never heard of this Statement of Economic Interest before but it makes sense that this disclosure would be required. And our elected officials should be in full compliance with this law – not lawbreakers!!. How did you know to even look into this requirement, or have you been following these disclosures year to year?
I’ve run into problems investigating other cities, finally got around to checking here. It looks like few people take them seriously
You summed it up with “laws don’t matter” – remember, “Some animals are more equal than others.”