I wanted to give everyone an update on how we are doing on the Sunshine Amendment petition. We are around 275 MAAA signatures and I expect to be around 300 signatures around July 4th. Our goal is to be around 600 signatures at Labor Day. That is an ambitious goal, but the rate at which we are collecting signatures is increasing!
I am extremely optimistic that we will be able to get the Sunshine Amendment to an Academy membership vote. And, an unexpected bonus of this project has been learning a lot about the federal Freedom of the Information Act (‘FOIA’) and the associated state statutes. The Academy refused to share the Academy membership list (even though I continue to believe they are required to do so under Illinois law). Not wanting to push the issue to litigation with the Academy, we had to get creative and come up with a way to cobble together an email list of Academy members.
One of our best tools in assembling our email list has been the FOIA and similar statutes. By the nature of their work, a lot of actuaries have interactions with the federal government or state governments. In many cases, this makes their email addresses subject to disclosure under an open records request. The rules vary between federal agencies and then each state has it owns rules. So, it can be a slow, frustrating process. But, it also has been an illuminating window into our government. I am going to start posting some of the interesting documents obtained via open record requests on the ASCCoQsunshine.com website over the next few weeks.
Enjoy the summer sunshine and please support the Sunshine Amendment!