Mayor Rahm Emanuel took another clandestine jaunt out of town on Monday, this time to New York, purportedly to raise funds for the Obama campaign. more ›

2nd Ward Ald. Robert Fioretti’s ordinance would expose the disciplinary board’s largely secretive decision-making process to public review. more ›

Mayor Emanuel said today the city's budget deficit won't be balanced with reserve or rainy day funds, but didn't rule out tax hikes in 2013 and beyond. more ›

Well this is a surprise. And a welcome one. more ›

It looks like at least one good thing will come of the whole Blago mess: Advocates are pushing to re-write the state law that governs access to public records. They've generated a wave of support hinged on a former governor who repeatedly denied requests for documents. more ›

Ask, and ye shall receive. After Saturday’s post about a possible TIF transparency requirement, we bothered Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd, pictured right) about the list of his fellows who signed on in favor of the proposal. He says he ran out of time to gather more than the 20* signatures below at the city council meeting last week - but that he hopes to get about nine more in the coming weeks. The ordinance would require documents relating to TIFs - from weekly payroll reports to annual filings - appear on their own website, indexed for the ease of public use. The new people on Mayor Daley's "enemies list" are: more ›

A new website was recently launched to help regular citizens keep an eye on how the federal stimulus spending package is being spent. Stimulus Watch is an aggregation of projects listed in U.S. Conference of Mayors' report of its list of "shovel ready" projects that they hope will benefit from the massive federal spending bill. more ›