Open Illinois.org

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Unfortunately, Illinois took two steps back in the transparency movement last week during veto session. The first occurred in a move to deny Illinois citizens the right to ask for government employee performance evaluations through a Freedom of Information (FOIA) …

All interested in government transparency, check out this new site, sunshinestandard.org, created by Sunshine Review.

The website aims to provide citizens and elected officials with model legislation and tools to launch reforms and expand the amount of information available …

The city of Chicago has just approved 6 million dollars in tax increment financing (TIF) for Accretive Health Inc. “to pay for job training and the build-out costs” of a new facility, which will be located at 231 South LaSalle …

What is your school district spending money on?

Check out some new spending data available on our spending transparency website, IllinoisOpenGov.org.

We have included school vendor information for you to check out! We’ll also be updating current information …

Although tax increment financing (TIF) has been around for over thirty years, many people do not understand how it works, how it affects their communities or their pocketbooks. Most people have no idea a significant portion of their property taxes …

Mayor Daley went forward with his plans to use TIF reserves in order to “balance” his proposed FY2011 budget, leaving it to his future replacement to tackle the inherent problems that led the city into a deficit in …

Not many people understand tax increment financing (TIF) very well, and the lack of transparency in the TIF process, particularly in Chicago, leaves many taxpayers unaware of exactly where TIF developments are located, how many tax dollars are going …

In the last few years, the federal government and many state governments have used a similar approach to dealing with the economic downturn: higher taxes and more government spending. Governor Quinn’s proposed tax hikes and his $31 billion Illinois Jobs …

Do you know how much you’re paying for lobbyists?

Sunshine Review has released a paper about taxpayer-funded lobbying in Illinois, reporting information about lobbying contracts and membership in taxpayer-funded lobbying associations. Taxpayer-funded lobbying associations are groups funded at least …

From S.T. Karnick at The American Culture:

In case you missed it, LA Times reporters Jason Felch, Jason Song and Doug Smith used California’s public records law to obtain seven years of math and English test scores from the

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