Illinois residents will see a bit of improvement in their open records law now that Gov. Pat Quinn has signed the rewrite of the law.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the new law will give Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office “sweeping new powers to interpret what records are public and settle records disputes. It will shorten somewhat the time government has to respond to record requests, establish civil fines for violators, and force public agencies to pay for attorneys fees on both sides if they lose in court.”

However, the story says, “there is still broad language that leaves open the door to oft-abused exemptions for requests that are ‘unduly burdensome’ and ‘a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’”

When the Post-Dispatch was investigating how home buyers were being affected by residue left from previous residents who had meth labs in the house, we were unable to get some police reports of meth lab busts because the report might invade the personal privacy of the person charged with operating the meth lab. There was one homeowner who bought a house that turned out to be the site of a former meth lab and the homeowner could not get the police report because of the privacy issue.

Clearly, Illinois has a long way to go on giving the public access to what should be public records.