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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Department of Fleet & Facility Management, which is varyingly acronymized as both 2FM and FFM in city documentation, was created in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first budget by the merger of the ...

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 ...

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 ...

Photo of the Illinois State Capitol. In 2023, the Office of Statewide Pretrial Services launched a probation and pretrial electronic monitoring program for 70 of Illinois’ 102 counties. It has since ...

Chicago’s City Council allows public comment at all of its meetings, including meetings of its committees. There are multiple ways to submit public comment, but each has a specific application process ...

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 ...

Illinois courts are quickly falling behind in key areas of data-collection required by the state’s new Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act – a lag that is making it ...

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 ...

Under Illinois’ Freedom of Information Act, there is a presumption that government records are open to the public. Body cam footage is an anomaly. Its availability is dictated by the Law Enforcement ...