Penalize the Whistleblowers

So much for government actually answering to taxpayers (You have to read all the way to the end of hte linked article to get to this one):

• The county will also seek to plug any leaks of confidential summary reports that come from the county’s Office of the Independent Inspector General. The amendment to the ordinance governing the inspector general’s office will make it so that anyone who releases confidential summary reports — such as the one detailing Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker removing toilets from the mansion next door to his Gold Coast home that the Sun-Times reported on in October — could face fines and jail time.
  
  The county’s top watchdog, Pat Blanchard, said his office had never experienced a leak of that nature before the release of the Pritzker report.
  
  [...] Anyone who leaks summary reports may now “be subject to a penalty of up to six months imprisonment and fines up to $5,000.00 per violation” — a “hefty” penalty, according to Blanchard.
  
  Suffredin is also leading the charge on the changes to the inspector general’s ordinance, which was introduced last year. He says it “undermines the ability” of the inspector general to do deep-dive investigations if the preliminary findings are immediately made public.
  
  [...] “The balance that our office is always kind of engaged in is protecting the confidentiality of witnesses and sources, but transparency is also an issue,” Blanchard said. “What this will do is make clear to recipients and secondary recipients of reports that they can’t release them for political purpose.”

It also undermines the ability of voters to see just how corrupt Cook County, Chicago and Illinois politicians truly are. It's amusing how they demand "transparency" for everyone....except where they do their dirty business.

And who do they think they're fooling? They've released all manner of reports for political purposes. We remember way back in 2004, the Tribune was directed to sue for the sealed divorce records of one Jack Ryan, who was running for the US Senate against some unknown Machine creation named Obama.

In Illinois politics, everything would seem to be fair game - it was just used against a democrat this time.