Request 011 — 1/11/2026

Mc-what?

Hi all! Happy Sunday, it’s foiaday!

I already made a Sunday Scaries joke last week, and we’ve got about fifty-odd more Sundays to go, so I’m not going to push it by making another one. (But three weeks from now? Fair game.)

Tomorrow, I’m going to send out a weekly round-up of the requests this past week, and what we’ve gotten back in return. We’re up to eleven days of requests for probably 25 different types of documents so far!

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But let’s talk about today. If you don’t live in Chicago, but you’ve instead visited, you’ve probably encountered McPier without even knowing it. 

McPier is the glue holding Chicago’s major business-and-pleasure tourists together. While it’s been colloquially reduced down to a Mc-name, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, or MPEA, is a governor-and-mayor-appointed board that runs the municipal corporation that owns Navy Pier, the McCormick Place convention center, and Wintrust Arena, as well as other connected properties. 

Like most public-private partnerships, board membership is kind of complicated. Half the board is appointed by the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, then approved by the state Senate. The other half is appointed by the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson. At least one board member has to “represent the interests of the convention industry,” and the majority of members delegate a chairperson of the board. 

The board members are a solid mix of industry professionals; they’re currently led by Jeff Bethke, who was the former EVP and CFO of DePaul University, my alma mater.  

Board members aren’t compensated for their time leading and guiding the MPEA, according to the state. But. They are reimbursed for all expenses incurred as a part of their role on the board.

I’d love to get a sense of what people are being reimbursed for. I know that in the past week I’ve already pulled for financial disclosure docs and other sort of budgetary info, so let’s tack on something else — travel expenses.

McPier is a big deal for Chicago. When the DNC came to town, most of the fanfare and cameras and protests and sights were at and around the United Center. But most of the meat and potatoes of the DNC was actually hosted at McCormick Place, whose large, formerly-bird-killing buildings housed tens of thousands of people attending caucuses, meetings and other events for the Democratic Party.

Choose Chicago, the tourism and marketing organization for the city, estimated that the DNC drove $371.4 million in economic impact for Chicago. (For reference, Lollapalooza generated about $440 million in 2024.)  

In an attempt to not make this so Chicago focused, let’s also pull from the city that’ll be hosting the Olympics in just two years: L.A. 

Similarly to Chicago (and virtually all major cities), the City of Los Angeles has a tourism board formally housed within the city government.

That, my friends, makes it FOIA-ble.

Like Chicago and the MPEA, members of the tourism commission are subject to similar government ethics policies that lawmakers, representatives or other employees face, too. 

So let’s jump in and request some records from the MPEA as well as city of Los Angeles:

Copies of the following documents:

- The current, or most recent, records retention schedule for the board. This is a document that lists out the types and descriptions of records kept by the board, including how long each record is kept. Please send this in a .pdf format if possible.

- A list, log, or data sufficient to show all travel expenses by members of the board between 1/1/2023 and present (1/11/2026, or whenever this request is processed). Please include the dates, descriptions, cost, cost center, and other related information for line item expenses for travel undertaken as part of each board member’s duties. If at all possible, please release the document in a machine-readable format, like a .csv, .xlsx, or database file.

- A list, log or data sufficient to show all reimbursements by members of the board between 1/1/2025 and present (1/11/2026, or whenever this request is processed). Please include the dates, descriptions, cost, cost center, and other related information for line item expenses for travel undertaken as part of each board member’s duties. If at all possible, please release the document in a machine-readable format, like a .csv, .xlsx, or database file.

It seems like I’m committed to being a night owl with these, or at least on non-school-nights. I’m a bit under the weather, so the cocktail of cold & flu meds (plus everything else) is knocking things way out of wack! Maybe my next request should be for sick day requests to agencies.

Regardless — have a good night, and see y’all tomorrow with a hefty roundup of the requests and records of the week! 

Best,

Cam