Andy Shaw

The sharpest disagreements in our questionnaire center on familiar themes: Improving public safety, reviving neighborhood schools and reforming the city’s controversial Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program.

Government’s massive financial problems and excesses are undeniable, and “smart streamlining” is a good way to tackle the issue head on.

We had a highly competitive, in-your-face governor’s race last fall that still failed to get even half of Illinois’ registered voters to cast ballots.

It’s show time again in Springfield, and the supporting cast is the same as last year — more than a hundred Democrats who maintain veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate.

Budget blues, shoddy services, pension perils, dubious deals, and pollution problems — just a sampling of the concerns and controversies the Better Government Association investigated this past year.

The joy of the holiday season is invariably tempered, for the incoming Rauner administration and the ongoing General Assembly, by the daunting challenges awaiting them in Springfield next month.

Once upon a time, Illinois was known as the “Wild West” of campaign finance because the state lacked any substantive limits on what candidates could raise and spend on their runs for political office.

Rush isn’t the only congressman with a cloud over his head, but our findings, and his apparent unwillingness to take full responsibility for his lapses, suggest a mandatory ethics refresher would do him, and many others, a lot of good.

The environments that enable questionable conduct and tragic outcomes are deeply entrenched, and the painful results sadly predictable.

It makes perfect sense when you consider the symbol of the BGA mission, since its inception in 1923 — that’s 91 years ago — has been a bulldog.