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ENDING ON A HIGH NOTE Jacobs wrestling team holds off rival Huntley on senior night / C1 NWHerald.com
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Transparency law sees new life Rauner to implement law pushed through by Franks 2 years ago By EMILY K. COLEMAN ecoleman@shawmedia.com A law pushed through by state Rep. Jack Franks two years ago that required the state to post local government salaries online never was implemented. But newly inaugurated Gov. Bruce Rauner said he’s going to get it done.
The law was one of the items Franks, D-Marengo, said he’s discussed with Rauner since the Chicago businessman beat former Gov. Pat Quinn in Quinn’s bid for re-election. Franks called Quinn out this past summer for never adding the local salary information to the Illinois Transparency and Accountability
Portal, a website created in 2010 as a database of state workers, their jobs and their salaries. The governor’s office said at the time that the law was never implemented because funding never had been appropriated by the General Assembly. “It’s refreshing to have someone as an executive who
acts like one, who makes decisions,” said Franks, who has pushed a number of transparency measures and has repeatedly said he wants government to be an “absolute open book,” where all contracts and expenditures are available to the public. The move comes three days after Rauner was inaugurated, an event that was preceded
by a flurry of executive orders and appointments from the outgoing governor. Among those was an order that called for all of the databases put together by state agencies to be made accessible through a single online portal. Rauner’s administration canceled all appointments and said it was reviewing Quinn’s final executive orders.
Bruce Rauner Illinois governor
State Rep. Jack Franks D-Marengo
Panel: No alternative to bulk collection
WEB-BASED VERSUS FACE-T0-FACE LEARNING
Report offers ways to restrict data use By KEN DILANIAN The Associated Press
H. Rick Bamman – hbamman@shawmedia.com
McHenry County College professional development assistant Kathleen Hayhurst checks workstations in a training room at the Crystal Lake campus. Hayhurst got both her associate and bachelor’s degrees by working online and in traditional classroom settings.
A DEGREE’S
WORTH McHenry County employers indifferent on online education in hiring Story by By ALLISON GOODRICH agoodrich@shawmedia.com
After making a commitment to get an associate degree partly online, it was much easier for Kathleen Hayhurst of Wonder Lake to transition from a part-time position to a full-time one. Working as a professional development assistant at McHenry County College, Hayhurst said going to school entirely faceto-face wasn’t an option between work and family obligations. Taking online courses through MCC was more convenient, and it made her feel no less qualified than if she would’ve gotten the degree completely faceto-face, she said. With more students like Hayhurst coming out of higher education today, a few of the larger employers in the area said for them, a degree obtained completely or partially online is hardly a make or break factor when it comes to hiring. At Centegra Health System, Director of Employment and Development Matt Johnson said both online and traditional degrees are recognized equally.
If interviewing two candidates with similar experience, the origin of their degrees “wouldn’t be a factor that would weigh real heavily,” Johnson said. He pointed out that online education wouldn’t be feasible for some positions, such as nurses or other clinical jobs, and a majority of applicants do have traditional brickand-mortar degrees. Still, Johnson said he’s noticed a higher number of online-educated candidates coming in each year. Within Crystal Lake School District 47, potential hires with either type of degree also are welcome, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Greg Buchanan said. “We approve online courses through accredited universities, and we do have staff who have degrees where a portion of their credits were earned via online coursework,” he said in an email. The circumstances differ for teachers, though, as undergraduate teaching degrees
WASHINGTON – A committee of scientific experts has concluded that there is no viable technological alternative to bulk collection of data by the National Security Agency that allows analysts access to communications whose significance only becomes clear years later. An 85-page report by the National Research Council, commissioned last year in the wake of surveillance revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, did not take a position on the merits of bulk collection of telephone or other records. But asked to look for effective software alternatives to bulk collection, it concluded there weren’t any, in cases when, for example, the NSA wants to examine the past communications of new terror suspects. “Restricting bulk collection will make intelligence less effective, and technology cannot do anything about this,” the report says. ‘Whether the gain in privacy is worth the loss is a policy question that the committee does not address.” If a particular set of communications becomes significant, the report says, “because of new circumstances such as identifying a new target, a non-nuclear nation that is now pursuing the development of nuclear weapons, an individual that is found to be a terrorist, or new intelligence-gathering priorities_ historical events and the data they provide will be available
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Police say 21-year-old Cary man is ‘high-risk missing person’ / A3 STATE
Twice is nice
Clemency action questioned
McHenry’s Jesse Reiser named Gatorade’s Illinois Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year for the second consecutive year / C1
Former Illinois governor Pat Quinn’s decision to cut in half the prison term of a woman who killed her husband draws more criticism / B3
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