With the new year came changes to the state's open records law – including lowered costs and faster responses to citizens asking for documents.

It also brought new responsibilities for governments, and – 10 weeks into the year and the law – cities, school districts and other governments are still adjusting.

Major changes in the Illinois Freedom of Information Act took effect Jan. 1. Some government officials say the law places new and heavy burdens on them. But others say the law has produced few if any problems.

In most cases, locally, citizens are getting the records they seek and the number of requests seems to have stayed about the same.

"We thought we would get a bunch" of requests when the law changed, said Janet Myers, city clerk of Danville. "But we have not seen any increase."

In Urbana, where 23 requests were filed in February, "so far, everything's been OK," City Clerk Phyllis Clark said. "It really doesn't feel like it's all that much more."

In the Champaign school district, Assistant Superintendent Beth Shepperd was expecting more requests, but "there has not been a change at this point," she said.

The Freedom of Information Act, originally enacted in 1984, governs how citizens may ask for public records and in what circumstances governments can withhold all or parts of records. It has been amended many times but never as significantly as the version that took effect Jan. 1.

The intent of the changes is to make records easier to get for the public.

Governments have to log requests and monitor them in ways they didn't have to before the new year, and they have five days rather than seven to act on requests. There are limits on what governments can charge a person who has made a request – the first 50 copies must be free. Government training is required for those who respond to requests. The attorney general's office can intervene in a request.

The law specifies that even if it's financially burdensome to provide the records, governments must do so.

Champaign City Attorney Fred Stavins said the changes are costing taxpayers money.

"Make no mistake about it," Stavins said, "it costs money to comply with the act. And when somebody has a personal whim that they want to fulfill – not all FOIA requests are the same. Some FOIA requests are made by serious journalists, some made by casual journalists. Some people just have a (bone) that they want to pick, and that's OK, too. But it's all at a cost to citizens.

"Every time somebody touches a piece of paper, it's a cost," he said.

Asked for specific costs, Stavins said, "Don't know yet. How long has the act been in effect? Month? Month and a half? (We) don't know. We'll try to absorb that."

Trisha Crowley, the assistant city attorney for Champaign who has handled FOIA requests for some years and is training city workers in its use, said the cost may appear in other tasks that don't get done.

"People were busy before," she said. "And now they have a new duty that's going to take time. And we don't have money for overtime, so this new duty is going to force out other duties."

The law requires that governments must "prominently display" information about access to records at their offices and on their Web sites.

The Champaign school district recently moved existing information about the law to its home page.

"That wasn't there," but it was on the site, said Shepperd, who is in charge of compliance with the law.

The city of Urbana is "in the process" of getting the FOIA information together for its Web site, Clark said.

In many of the governments, procedures – logging requests, posting information online, training employees – are what's new. Access to records appears not to have changed, except to have gotten faster because the deadline has been shortened.

But agencies are still working some of those procedures out.

In Champaign, all requests for information, including oral requests, are being treated as formal requests under the law. The recipient – whether it's a clerical worker, an inspector or someone else – is supposed to send an e-mail to the city's designated freedom of information officer.

That has meant some more time for requests that previously were granted without a thought.

"Someone comes in and asks for a copy of an ordinance or a copy of a fire report or a copy of the inspection of their house or a copy of a wide variety of information that we give out," Crowley said. "And before, they would print it out or copy it out or have it already available in some form and give it to the person. Well, now, we have to track that. We have to log it. That's what the law says. We have to log every FOIA request. So that after someone comes in and asks for an ordinance, you have to send an e-mail to the city FOIA officer saying 'I had this request, it was fulfilled.' Now it's logged."

The city has just finalized the logging process it will use, she said, so there is no way to tell yet how much extra work it will take.

One likely outcome of the changes in the law will be more information posted online.

"The more we can get on the Web site, the more copying costs we can save," Shepperd said.

The district has a spreadsheet listing administrators' salaries and benefits, and copies of the pay scales for other employees.

The city of Champaign has begun to post the vouchers – lists of payments – that are approved at city council meetings to its Web site.

The University of Illinois posts the "Gray Book," listing UI salaries, among its trustees agenda pages on the Web.

A major change under the new law grants broad powers to the attorney general's office. In some cases, if a government denies a record, it must notify the attorney general's office of the denial. The public access counselor in the attorney general's office has the power to make binding decisions on some requests.

Cara Smith, the public access counselor, said in an interview that she is "very cautiously optimistic about the compliance level among public bodies."

She said government agencies are sending "thorough and thoughtful" information to back up their decisions in most cases of denials or requests to exempt some information.

Still, she said, "there's a lot of resentment" about the attorney general involvement.

Stavins said the attorney general involvement creates an inefficiency.

"I'm not saying there's not a real important role for the attorney general to play in advising," he said, "and issuing opinions, providing guidance for the state. But to have the attorney general involved in individual FOIA requests from across the state just seems completely inefficient.

"From where I sit," Smith said, "the fears that the world would come to a screeching halt when this law took effect have not materialized.

"We intended this law to bring about greater transparency," she said, "and there's no question we're on our way there."

Freedom of Information Act in Illinois

Since Jan. 1, 2010, the attorney general's office has received 394 pre-authorization requests to invoke exemptions from public bodies in Illinois. Those requests, if granted, allow the bodies to withhold all or part of a request for records.

The office has received 273 requests for review of local decisions. Those happen when someone who has filed a request for records believes the public body has violated the act.

And 5,922 people have registered and taken FOIA training, Open Meetings Act training or both from the attorney general's Web site.

Source: Public access counselor, Illinois attorney general's office