I have to confess that I’m conflicted. I’ve spent my career in journalism as an avid supporter — some might say rabid — of open government and freedom of information, but the proposed law regarding public employee performance reviews has me walking both sides of the fence.
In May, the General Assembly sent House Bill 5154 to Gov. Pat Quinn for his signature. As written, the legislation would have changed the Illinois Freedom of Information Act to prohibit public disclosure of performance reviews for state employees. But in late July, Quinn used his amendatory veto power to change the bill so it would only ban disclosure of performance evaluations of local and state police personnel. If the legislature approves his changes, all other performance reviews of state employees will be open to the public.
In his veto message, Quinn restated his commitment to “groundbreaking legislation that I approved just last year, making our State’s open information laws among the most robust in the entire country.” He later added, “We cannot turn back now.”
Even though Quinn left only a small part of the original legislation intact, journalism groups still complained, with the Illinois Press Association stating that his action was “poor public policy on so many levels. The new FOIA law needs to be given time to work before being assaulted with attempts to make changes and exemptions. We urged the Governor to veto the entire bill and still believe that was the best action to take.”
I’m usually in lockstep with the state press association when it comes to open government. I believe exemptions to the FOI law should be few and limited. I have filed many FOI requests over the years and have written extensively about how the state needed stronger laws. In 1999, I coordinated a statewide project for the Illinois Associated Press that found that only about a third of governmental units complied with the law when asked to reveal public information such as city council minutes, school superintendents’ travel records, jail occupants and the like. I like to think that investigation helped in some way to bring about the changes, which took effect January 1.
I certainly believe public employees’ salaries should be public — witness the recent revelations that the pay of a parks executive in Highland Park was boosted to more than $450,000 to increase his pension, or that the city manager of a small Los Angeles suburb was paid nearly $800,000 a year. The same goes for official travel expenses, office expenditures, decisions on promotions and most other personnel records involving public workers. But I balk when it comes to performance reviews.
Granted, we at Illinois Issues are in a peculiar position: We are journalists and we are public employees. It would be easy to dismiss my hesitation as simply, “Aha, your tune has changed now that you’re on the other side.” But my concerns don’t stem from my position as an employee — perhaps surprisingly, my own performance reviews have been generally good. Instead, they relate to my more than 25 years as a supervisor who has conducted hundreds of performance reviews for staffs that ranged from five to 50 employees.
For most of that time, I worked for four of the largest newspaper companies in the country. I went through extensive in-house management training programs and attended numerous industry institutes for supervisors. The first rule in all my classes on improving employee performance was: Praise in public; criticize in private.
Even though I helped devise employee evaluation systems for several organizations, my opinion on the value of annual formal performance reviews has soured somewhat over the years. I’ve seen too many instances where they were misused: different supervisors applying different standards; companies targeting higher-paid employees to reduce costs; supervisors instructed to rate employees on a “curve,” where a certain percentage received poor — or good — reviews, regardless of their actual performance. But that said, as a member of a management team, I still take performance reviews seriously.
At best, an annual performance review provides an uninterrupted block of time for an employee and supervisor to discuss successes and failures in the past year and set goals for the coming one. Although performance evaluation is an ongoing process — no one should be surprised during a formal review — the sit-down session can still be a designated time for complete honesty, for hammering out disagreements and reaching solutions, for team-building and all those other management buzzwords that masquerade as fancy terms for common sense. A performance evaluation can be a productive process — I’ve seen it work. It also can be documentation for discipline or dismissal if a bad situation doesn’t improve — I’ve seen that at work, as well.
But most of all, I believe it should be an essentially private communication between management and employee. If both the supervisor and the employee know that whatever’s said could be published on a website for anyone to see — and used for any purpose — both will be so wary and guarded that the process will have no chance to work at all.
I do know that as a supervisor of public employees, I will be more restrained in what I commit to paper during future performance evaluations of my staff. I hope my super-visor will, as well.
As a lifelong journalist, I truly believe in open government and the free flow of public information. But as a manager, I also worry that publicly disclosing the contents of employee reviews could render what I already view as a questionable system for improving performance entirely useless.
I believe exemptions to the FOI law should be few and limited.
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On a more positive note, it’s again time for our annual expression of gratitude to those who have made financial donations to Illinois Issuesduring the past fiscal year. We hope you realize that our appreciation manifests itself every day — we never cease to be humbled by your generosity.
Your support is needed more now than ever. As state government allocates less to higher-education institutions such as the University of Illinois Springfield, Illinois Issues faces the increasing challenge of becoming more self-sustaining to survive. Your contributions help us immensely as we travel along that path — not only financially but in knowing that our work is appreciated.
To all of our contributors, and to all of our readers and supporters who have helped us provide public affairs journalism for more than 35 years, we are immensely thankful.
Illinois Issues, September 2010
