Date: 8 May 2005 10:40:26 -0000 Message-ID: <20050508104026.49196.qmail@cr.yp.to> Automatic-Legal-Notices: See http://cr.yp.to/mailcopyright.html. From: "D. J. Bernstein" To: eec@cms.state.il.us Cc: dmcneely@uillinois.edu, legal_uic@uillinois.edu, legal_uiuc@uillinois.edu, legal_uis@uillinois.edu, skrugg@uic.edu Subject: Misbehavior by UI Ethics Officer This is a formal complaint to the Executive Ethics Commission regarding actions by Donna McNeely, the new University of Illinois Ethics Officer. Certain university employees (department heads, etc.) are required by law (5 ILCS 420/4A) to fill out Statements of Economic Interest each year. One of Ms. McNeely's responsibilities is to send a list of these employees to the Office of the Secretary of State. Ms. McNeely erroneously included, on this list, the names of many people who are not required by law to fill out the form. I estimate that the victims include more than 500 tenured professors. I'm one of them. Ms. McNeely and her attorneys have been completely unwilling to correct this error. They have been completely unresponsive to two detailed complaints that I sent five weeks ago. They have demonstrated a wanton disregard for the interests of professors harmed by Ms. McNeely's false statements to the Office of the Secretary of State. Neither the University of Illinois nor the Office of the Secretary of State has any procedures to correct Ms. McNeely's errors. Ms. McNeely has completely unregulated power to singlehandedly add names to the list. The Office of the Secretary of State says that they will impose heavy fines and termination of employment to punish me for my refusal to submit the form. The law says that penalties apply only to people required by law to fill out the form, but the Office of the Secretary of State says that they blindly trust Ms. McNeely's list. Most victims have succumbed to these unlawful threats and exposed themselves to identity theft. Ms. McNeely and her attorneys have thus violated the victims' privacy rights and the victims' due-process rights. One can, of course, criticize the state legislators who failed to set up procedures to correct errors; but any competent official in Ms. McNeely's position would have recognized the possibility of errors, the potential damage caused by those errors, and the constitutional obligation to provide a hearing regarding alleged errors, even if the law itself failed to do so. Furthermore, beyond her statements to the Office of the Secretary of State, Ms. McNeely has made several further statements that force the reader to question her competence to serve as a state ethics officer: * In her letter to the victims, Ms. McNeely named certain categories of people who, she said, were required to fill out the form. Was this a copy of the three categories in the university's relevant policy statement, copied in turn from the law? No! Ms. McNeely quietly added an extra category that does not appear in the law. * On 24 March 2005, Ms. McNeely stated that her actions were based on ``an interpretation by University Counsel.'' The lawyers then said that they were unaware of any such memo. * On 25 March 2005, after admitting that she had never seen any such memo, Ms. McNeely said that her actions were actually based on a ``note'' from the previous University Ethics Officer. Ms. McNeely has not sent me a copy of this note, despite repeated requests. My web page http://cr.yp.to/uic/eis.html includes copies of the email from Ms. McNeely and the lawyers. I have no idea why Ms. McNeely is hiding this note from me, if she has honestly characterized its contents. If you have questions regarding the specifics of Ms. McNeely's error (for example, her plainly erroneous assertion that I'm a university contract negotiator), or regarding any other aspects of this incident, I'll be happy to provide more information. ---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago