Here’s a new state law we can all get behind: Public Act 098-0738, which requires certain disclosures pertaining to city and county audits.
Introduced by Rep. Tom Demmer, the law went into effect this month. Here’s another version with the deets.
Of particular interest to me is the now-required sharing of the auditors’ letters to management that accompany each audit. It was just a couple years ago that a tipster told me there was such a thing. Once aware of their existence, I began making Freedom of Information Act requests for these letters, and boy have they ever been illuminating. Just look at the posts I’ve done:
City of DeKalb Had ‘Excess Expenditures’ of $3.1 Million in FY2013
DeKalb’s Police Department Overspent by $700,000 last fiscal year
The latest management letter, for FY2015, was published with the annual financial report in the December 14 council meeting agenda. Start on p. 19 of the PDF. Notice the addition of the management response to each item of concern, too.
What a difference good transparency laws can make. Hats off to Rep. Demmer.
Hats off to anonymous tipsters, too.