Public Officials and their Personal Finances

Today's Trib has a story on the financial interests of Chicago's new mayor. Rahm Emanuel is apparently worth as much as $16.6 million. He made more from interest, dividends, and capital gains last year than he did in salary. And unless the laws change, he won't have to report as much about his finances ever again.

Rahm Emanuel has been in office for a month, but this snapshot of his finances comes from federal disclosure forms he filled out as a member of the Obama administration. From now on, he will be filing out state and local disclosure forms, none of which are as detailed. Which is a shame, because as Mayor of the City of Chicago, he now has more discretion, more employees, and more policies under his control.

The point of requiring public officials to disclose their private finances is to let the public know where their representatives may be tempted to feather their own nest rather than do what is right for the public. If an official stands to profit personally from a decision that would also hurt constituents, then the public should have warning. As the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this week in a slightly off-topic case, public officials act "as trustee for [their] constituents, not as a prerogative of personal power." To ensure that officials do not confuse what is best for themselves with what is best for the public, Illinois requires public officials to reveal where they would be tempted to set their priorities ahead of their constituents'. (See Section 2)

Alas, our state form does a poor job of ensuring this disclosure. As we have noted for years, the Statement of Economic Interest fails to ask good questions, and so fails to produce useful information.  The problem is not that officials like Mayor Emanuel are hiding information from the public; the problem is that the forms do not ask the right questions.

Rahm Emanuel has filed Illinois' Statement of Economic Interest, and also Chicago's Statement of Financial Interest. Both list the names of companies he holds interests in, but neither gives any sense of how much he owns or how much he earns from each. It will take changes to the law to get the same level of information in each year of his time as Mayor.