Just a few months after the last remaining law enforcement agencies were required to equip officers with body cameras, several legislative efforts in 2025 tried to limit access to body […] ...

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 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 ...

Perhaps you’ve heard the buzz about something called ranked choice voting. Instead of marking their ballots for just one candidate, voters are asked to rank two or three or more, with the winner ...

A series of new lobbying priorities announced by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at a press conference last week included tweaks to revenues the city currently receives from the state government, but ...

Departmental budgets for three of Chicago’s oversight agencies are not on their own sufficient to meet mandatory minimums described in law, a BGA Policy analysis of annual appropriations and related ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...