The village of Tinley Park has doubled-down on its investment in a privately managed restaurant within the 80th Avenue Metra station, voting this month to give $57,000 to Parmesans Station for a new pizza oven, according to the Chicago Tribune. In 2012, the village fronted a $600,000 investment for the restaurant space to complement the...

At least 84 corruption-related stories have been reported from across the state of Illinois in August alone. Atop August headlines is the recent revelation that a federal grand jury subpoenaed the emails of Gov. Pat Quinn’s ex-chief of staff in relation to Quinn’s anti-violence grant program. The case, which has been referred to by some...

The bad news keeps piling up for Illinoisans. Illinois Policy’s “corruption watch” blog series hit a new high in the month of July with nearly 100 corruption-related stories. Chicago and Springfield are the two cities most synonymous with the state’s corruption woes. Unsurprisingly, both cities dominated headlines with the top two corruption stories of the...

For far too long Illinois politicians haven’t done enough to address a public corruption epidemic that has wreaked havoc on the state’s image and the pocketbooks of its taxpayers. Illinois consistently ranks in the top five states for public corruption, and a recent study estimated the cost of corruption in Illinois at nearly $1.4 billion...

Unfortunately for taxpayers, June was a groundbreaking month for corruption in Illinois. In June alone, there were reports of 85 corruption-related stories in the state. Some of the record-breaking highlights include the following: For the first time in 33 years, the Illinois Legislative Audit Commission exercised its subpoena powers in the issuance of a subpoena...

In completing our second month of the new “Illinois Corruption Watch” project, we are shocked at the volume of corruption stories being reported across the state. In just two months we have found reports of 101 different corruption-related stories; 45 in April and 56 in May. It’s no wonder Illinois citizens have by far the...

45.  April 30, 2014 Sun-Times: Criminal probe of Quinn anti-violence plan rocks governor’s race A criminal grand jury has launched a probe into Gov. Pat Quinn’s troubled anti-violence program —  once likened to “a political slush fund” — delivering a major blow to the Democrat as he seeks re-election this fall. On Tuesday, the Quinn...

When it comes to local taxing bodies and local property taxes, Illinois is an extreme outlier in comparison to the rest of the nation. We rank first in number of local taxing bodies, with 6,963, and have the second-highest property tax rate in the nation. But this isn’t news for Illinois residents who have looked...

On the same day the White House announced an honor for Chicago Alderman Joe Moore as a “pioneer for political reform, governmental transparency and democratic governance,” Moore also revealed that he had been questioned by the FBI in an ethics probe concerning some of his former employees. As the Chicago Tribune reported: The accusations involving...