Chicago Treasurer Stephanie Neely may be using her assigned security detail to do more than protect her from, um, having the city treasury stolen? more ›

Mayor Emanuel reiterated his intent to have an independent investigator look into the city's contract with Lollapalooza, which gives the festival's owners a hearty amusement tax exemption. more ›

That's how much Ed Burke's security detail costs taxpayers. more ›

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has ordered an immediate full-stop to all credit card use after an investigation found city employees using city credit cards to pay for everything from flowers to expensive restaurants to city-issued red light tickets, more ›

The Illinois House approved a bill that would which would give government more power to delay Freedom of Information Act requests. more ›

Last week, we wrote about the Chicago Park District's top honchos lavishing in fancy hotels and dining on expensive meals while lobbying on business trips across the country. Perhaps their priorities have gone awry because instead they could be working on fixing a much needed west side gymnasium that flooded last summer. more ›

Urban renewal is a guiding mission for the Chicago Park District, but their attempts are becoming a costly burden on the urbanites. A joint investigation between the Better Government Association and Fox Chicago News found thousands of dollars charged to company credit cards for personal use. more ›

Throughout his mayoral tenure, Richard Daley has taken lengths to downplay his ties to the Duff family, even as he accepted campaign contributions from them and the Duffs wound up raking in major coin as a result of their connections to His Elective Majesty, to the tune of $100 million. more ›

Members of the Better Government Association investigative team have been answering reader questions at Windy Citizen today. One of the revelations in the Q&A from BGA Editor of Investigations Robert Herguth has been their setting up a Tumblr blog dedicated to the Blagojevich retrial. For politics and Blago wonks, this should be in your bookmarks by the time you finish reading this sentence. more ›

Theoretically, when a bill gets sent to a legislative committee, it's so that it can be properly vetted before it heads to the House floor for a vote. Theoretically, legislation is sent to committees based on subject matter, so that a bill that effected women's health would be looked at by the public health committee. This part of the legislative process would theoretically allow the analysis of laws before they come to a full vote in the House. So why then, is the House Agriculture Committee holding hearings on firearms and women's health issues, among other things? more ›

We've all seen the bumpers this week on CBS2 where Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas tells Pam Zekman, "Channel 2 is not gonna tell Maria Pappas how to run her office." Maybe not. But the CBS2/Better Government Association investigation that brought to public attention Pappas' $94,000 driver and $57,000 cleaning lady has uncovered more wasteful taxpayer spending in the form of Pappas' Treasurers Outreach Program (TOPS), a program former Treasurer's Office employees said is nothing more than an excuse for Papppas to throw a good old-fashioned Greek party that they were forced to work. more ›

If you care where our taxpayer money is going or are disillusioned with business as usual this post is not for you. It was another week of the Chicago Way. Over $3 million is being spent on fraud, waste and abuse, close to another million more if you count these clowns’ pensions and benefits. more ›

The suicide of former Metra chief Phil Pagano and the subsequent revelations regarding his finances could have something of a silver lining to them. The General Assembly, working with the Better Government Association, RTA and good-government lobbyists, passed legislation establishing an Inspector General for the transit authority that oversees CTA, PACE, and Metra. more ›

Did you know that, once upon a lonesome, there were 70 aldermen representing 35 wards in Chicago? That's one of the many tidbits you'll learn from a recent Better Government Association report that reopens the argument of whether we really need 50. more ›

Carol Moseley Braun, the Rev. James Meeks, Gery Chico and City Clerk Miguel del Valle, four of the five primary politicians trailing Rahm Emanuel in the mayoral election polls, gathered at Walter Payton Magnet High School to debate education reform last night in a forum moderated by Better Government Association President Andy Shaw. None of them said that the Chicago Public Schools system was performing well, campaigning as much against the recent record of Mayor Daley as each other. more ›

Tonight is the mayoral candidate forum on educational policy sponsored by the Illinois Policy Forum and Northside Democracy for America. One notable candidate won't be there, but if you're a policy wonk, curious about how the other 15 or so candidates would fix the school system, or just want to spend some time online listening to moderator Andy Shaw make them squirm, the Better Government Association will be live streaming the forum starting at 7 p.m. more ›

Chicago Magazine and the Better Government Association have teamed up on a thorough investigation into the political career and conflicts of interest of Democratic Cook County Assessor's Office nominee/Cook County Democratic Party chairman Joseph Berrios. Berrios has long been the subject of conflicts of interest: in his 22 years sitting on the Cook County Board of Review, Berrios has long received campaign contributions from tax attorneys who later present property tax appeals before him for review. Berrios's second job is as a property tax lobbyist in Springfield, which is another potential (outright?) conflict of interest. more ›

If you're looking for a little light late afternoon reading or something to skim over on the ride home today, why not an uplifting tale of how badly we're getting shafted by our elected (and sometimes installed) public officials? The Better Government Association and University of Illinois at Chicago has released "Corruption in Cook County," [.pdf] the third in a series of reports which are equal parts "Encyclopedia of shitty stuff county officials have done" and "What we should do about it but probably won't." more ›

• The Tribune reports Roman Szabelski, executive director of Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago, has been appointed to take over day-to-day operations of Burr Oak Cemetery in the wake of the horrific discoveries of the past week.
• The Reader's Ben Joravsky checked out the Chicago 2016 neighborhood meeting last night. What did he think? In his words: "I Tried."
• A man from Lombard was sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to set up a dog fight for his pit bull. The Chicagoist Intern does not approve.

Governor Blagojevich suffered a setback today as the Fourth District Illinois Appellate Court ruled in favor of releasing to the public federal subpoenas his administration has received. The Better Government Association sued the Governor to release the documents under the state of Illinois' Freedom of Information Act claiming they wanted to see how extensive the corruption investigation of Blagojevich has become. more ›

Sangamon County Circuit Judge Patrick Kelley ruled Wednesday that Governor Blagojevich's administration must disclose subpoenas from federal prosecutors in the ongoing investigation into state hiring. When the governor's office denied a Freedom of Information Act request for copies of the subpoenas last year, the Better Government Association, a Chicago-based government watchdog group, sued. US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating charges that the Blagojevich administration traded state jobs for campaign contributions. more ›

Although it's pretty much a given that Daley will coast to re-election at the end of next month, by no means does it mean that his time is office has been an unmitigated success. In a report card scheduled to be issued today by a coalition of interest groups and local activists called "Developing Government Accountability to the People," Daley received low grades in many areas, including economic development, transportation, education, criminal justice and ethics.... more ›

While Topinka and G-Rod tried desperately to link each other to convicted former Governor George Ryan in last night’s debate, the Executive Director of Chicago’s Board of Ethics was handing in her resignation. More time with the retiring husband, she says. more ›

Now and then a Chicago newspaper runs an article detailing gynormous sums of money coursing through the bank account of a campaign fund connected to a powerful city official. The story is usually structured: "Big sum of money -> little-known ward organization -> powerful official connected to it -> city contractors contribute to fund". The implication, with no direct facts, is usually that the powerful official directs city contractors to their favored ward organization, and in return the contractor gets a job. more ›