The Chicago Tribune combed a pile of legislation to produce an authoritative database of projects funded in an historic spending spree by Illinois.
Jonathon Berlin, Kori Rumore, and Meghan Kelly share a new database created by the Chicago Tribune that allows residents to search and discover where projects are happening as part of the state's $45 billion capital investment plan.
The capital investment plan has been credited as the state’s first major public works program in a decade. Given that historical significance, this article breaks down several different ways of understanding the plan, form its sources of funding, to the kinds of projects that will be funded, to how decisions about funding are made.
The star of the show, however, is the list produce by the Tribune analysis of the two bills that enabled the plan, HB62 [pdf] and SB262 [pdf]: 3,000 projects in all. There's also one big caveat:
Adding up all the projects below only gets to about $8.7 billion which is a lot less than the plan's total $45 billion in spending. That's because of a few reasons. 1. The list below only includes allocations where a specific project or town was listed. There are huge piles of funds that have not yet been decided or detailed by the state. And, 2. Some funds will be allocated in the years to come, after all, it's a 6-year plan.
FULL STORY: Will your town benefit from Illinois’ $45 billion infrastructure plan? Search our database.
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