Most public employees in Illinois receive a single pension upon retirement. But some workers don’t just get one pension – they get two or three. This is made possible by either working multiple government jobs at the same time, or retiring from one public job and beginning a second within a different pension system. Both...

On August 27, Gov. Quinn signed into law Senate Bill 923 which allows stop-arm cameras to be installed on school buses statewide. School districts would partner with a municipality or county to install and administer the stop-arm cameras violations. Violations would garner fines of up to $150 for a for a first time violation, and up to...

Cash-strapped Chicago is about to get an injection of money from motorists. The city is installing its controversial speed cameras at four neighborhood parks on Monday, and has plans for eight additional locations in the next few months. The city announced the results from a test of the new technology that showed surprising results. During a December trial,...

by Brian Costin Illinois is notorious for government corruption. Since 1976, the state has had the third-highest amount of public corruption convictions in the country — including four out of the last seven governors. Outside of Springfield, things aren’t much better. Chicago has been called “the most corrupt city in America.” A report by the University of Illinois-Chicago and...

One of the best protections against corruption is transparency, and in today’s digital age one of the easiest ways for government to be open and accountable is through posting public documents on the Internet. Unfortunately, most Illinois counties need to dramatically improve when it comes to online transparency. The Illinois Policy Institute recently audited all...

If your goal is to fight public corruption, where should Illinois’ capital be? That’s essentially the question asked in a recent Huffington Post article, which examined the results of two studies on the correlation between the remoteness of state capitals and public corruption. The surprising answer is Morris, a city of 13,636. Morris is also...

By a vote 100-6 State Rep. Derrick Smith (D-Chicago) has been expelled from the Illinois House of Representatives.

Illinois has long been known for corruption of government. Recently, a national public corruption study from University of Illinois-Chicago ranked the Northern District of Illinois as the most corrupt area in the nation. So it’s hardly shocking when we hear of another public corruption case. But the latest case of public corruption from the city of Dixon,...