Links of Interest
What We Read, December 5-9, 2011
Criminal Justice Court Reform:
- Alternative Behavior Treatment Centers (ABTC) and Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities (TASC) are holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a transitional living facility for juveniles today (December 9).
- The Chicago Justice Project blogs about how lack of access to data is shaping the public’s response to the City’s budget plan to close and merge some police stations.
Judicial Elections and Judiciary Reform:
Data collection and research for our judicial retention election work with the Judicial Performance Commission has begun. Meanwhile, here are some links about general issues with elections in our communities:
- Federal judges have dismissed the lawsuit brought by members of the Republican party challenging the redistricting map, drawn by the Democratic party.
- The San Diego Sun says that, in short, “the federal campaign finance system is a mess.”
- Meanwhile, the Illinois Campaign Finance Reform Task Force is under a Dec. 31 deadline to submit recommendations for election reform to the General Assembly, which may include public financing for elections.
- A new Brennan Center report looks at how design deficiencies in new voting technology led to lost votes which disproportionately affected the state’s poorest communities.
Links of General Interest:
- Mayor Emmanuel has announced the creation of an ethics panel. Among other things, the panel will track lobbying efforts in the City of Chicago.
- The Washington Post asks “What is a Lobbyist?”
- Chicago Lobbyists is an open source project using data from the City of Chicago data portal to improve the transparency of interactions between the City of Chicago and lobbyists and their clients. The project has been submitted to the Apps for Chicago Metro Competition, which challenges developers to make use of data sets from multiple governmental agencies and regional planning organizations.