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Welcome to Springfield. Here's your lobbyist.
When your state lawmaker gets to Springfield, there's a good chance a lobbyist will be waiting. And there's a good chance that lobbyist will be working for a city or other unit of local government. That's tax dollars paid to someone who is trying to influence other people who are paid tax dollars to do public business.

A new study from the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform shows 119 units of local government paid $6.3 million to lobbyists in the year ending June 30, 2009. That's about the same as in Fiscal Year 2008 and up from $5 million in 2007.

Of that $6.3 million, more than $1 million came from the four Chicago-area mass transit agencies.

David Morrison, the campaign's deputy director and the study's author, estimates this covers only 10 percent of lobbying. The real money, he says, is on behalf of private business, and that's not open for public inspection in Illinois . Morrison says it's an area in which the federal government requires more disclosure than Illinois does.

(Illinois Radio Network)
05 19 10 by Newsroom
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