Press Conference- The Books Are Open

September 13, 2011
Thompson Center, Chicago
Blue Room Press Conference

My name is Adam Andrzejewski | CEO, For The Good of Illinois

At For The Good of Illinois, we work to educate, engage, and empower citizens to bring transparency, accountability and limited government.

Today, we’ve just taken a major leap forward to fulfilling our mission by taking virtually every employee at every level of government and posted their pay and pension. From local government to the state, we have posted 7 million lines of payroll and pensions. This represents the grand sum of a quarter trillion dollars. You can view this at openthebooks.com.

Since 2007, I’ve made the promise to Open the Books.
Today, the Books, the Books are Open.

Here’s a quick analogy of our accomplishment:A couple months ago, Rahm Emanuel put the payroll of the City of Chicago online. Over the course of eight months, we’ve done this for the whole state.

Here’s why it’s important…
For most local government, employee payroll and pension is 70% or more of operating budget. The people have a right to know just how much their government costs.

Here’s why it’s also important…
By proactively posting public payroll and pensions, citizen and media- in large part- don’t have to go through the wait and intimidating process of filing FOIA request. In large part, as it relates to public employment- we’ve made that request obsolete. And that brings Illinois government into the 21st century?

What have we found: Here are three examples.
1. 3,000 highly compensated public employees out-salary the governor. Collectively, they have total compensation of nearly $1 billion.
2. In 2010, 4,867 educators retired. During their careers they paid into the system $439 million and in the first year of retirement, they’ll pull out $222 million. The return of their invested basis is less than 2 years.
3. In 2010, there are over 900,000 people who received either a payroll check or a pension check from Illinois government.

Now we don’t have “every dime” of spending, yet. It’s a starting point. But, we’ll continue to work on it until we have 100% of it.

This was a lot of work. Thousands of Freedom of Information Act Requests, nearly one year of work, and the building of a hot, fast, super quick website.

The people of Illinois have a right to know just how much their government costs. I suspect that as people use this database they will show emotion… a common response is “I’m in the wrong business.” I believe the people of Illinois are ready to hear the truth; I believe the people of Illinois are ready for reform.

Here is my message to the people of Illinois: it’s your turn.

Your turn for better decisions. Your turn for a better government.

For The Good of Illinois.