A BGA Policy analysis of the 16 county detention centers across Illinois has found that only three successfully have completed audits mandated by federal law to enforce protections against sexual ...

Departmental budgets for three of Chicago’s oversight agencies are not on their own sufficient to meet mandatory minimums described in law, a BGA Policy analysis of annual appropriations and related ...

Mayor Brandon Johnson released his proposed 2026 budget for the City of Chicago on Thursday, Oct. 16. As in previous years, BGA Policy will release a series of department-specific budget snapshots ...

A yearly Chicago ritual is about to begin. Oct. 16 marks the start of two weeks of budget hearings, when department heads will appear before City Council to take questions about their administrative ...

For first-time watchers, Chicago’s City Council can seem incomprehensible. Most of the business is done in a routine, rapid-fire succession of votes and gavel raps, punctuated by repetitions of the ...

Chicago taxpayers are on the hook for an average $93.6 million a year for legal judgments and settlements against the city. A Better Government Association policy team analysis found that after years ...

Perhaps you’ve heard the buzz about something called ranked choice voting. Instead of marking their ballots for just one candidate, voters are asked to rank two or three or more, with the winner ...

It is no secret that Illinois is home to the greatest number of government units in the nation, nearly 7,000. Following the passage of Senate Bill 3 in the summer of 2017, which made the process of ...

The Chicago Police Department is the city’s largest department both in headcount and in overall funds appropriated, with nearly three times the positions budgeted as the next-largest Chicago Fire ...

The proposed 2024 budget for the City of Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first, offers relatively modest increases in citywide spending and staffing, with a 1.3% increase in appropriations and a 0.9% ...

A unanimous Illinois Supreme Court ruling yesterday in a case called Chapman v. Chicago reverses a lower court’s ruling and blocks plaintiff Matt Chapman’s open records request for information from ...

Chicago’s City Council is off to a slow start in 2023: Only about 40% of its time in session so far this year – or about two of every five hours between the opening and closing gavels– has been spent ...