FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 2, 2001

CONTACT: Cynthia Canary, ICPR
312-335-1767
Kent Redfield, Sunshine Project
217-206-6574

EASY ACCESS AND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SOURCES OF CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS IN ILLINOIS

A redesign of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform (ICPR) web site has given Illinois citizens more information than ever before about who is funding the election campaigns of state officeholders.

"Following the trail of campaign funds in Illinois can be a tortuous journey through mountains of paperwork and political action committee detours," said Cynthia Canary, Director of the ICPR. "Now for the first time, the average voter easily can search through thousands of state-mandated reports in a matter of seconds and find an unprecedented amount of information about who is financing elections of state government leaders."

The searchable Illinois Sunshine Database was created by the non-profit Sunshine Project and is made available at the ICPR web site - www.ilcampaign.org -- with supplemental information about candidates and campaign reform issues.

The revamped ICPR web site includes the following:

¢ Biggest contributors. The site identifies the major contributors to every candidate for the General Assembly, the Supreme Court and statewide officeholders in the 1999-2000 election cycle. The same information is provided for members of the General Assembly, justices and statewide officeholders for the first six months of 2001.

¢ Enhanced search tool. Simply type in the name of any contributor and find out what candidates - winners and losers - received money from that contributor and how much was given.

¢ The Four Tops. Find out the details of contributions to the committees controlled by the four legislative leaders and by the statewide Democratic and Republican parties.

¢ Profiles. Information about the incumbents is broken down by top 20 contributors and totals by category, including business and professional groups, labor committees, political party and small donors.

¢ Balance sheet. In addition to contributions, the site also lists total expenditures and fund balances for the incumbents.

¢ Important links. Biographical information is available about each incumbent, and there are links to official web sites. This gives researchers a quick look at each legislator's committee assignments and bill sponsorships.

¢ Top 20. The top 20 contributors to candidates during the 1999-2000 election cycle are named along with profiles of the contributors, information about the legislative agenda for each top contributor and a breakdown of which parties and candidates received the campaign funds.

"For many years, Illinois campaign records were open to the public but not in a data base that could be searched for a variety of information and trends," said Kent Redfield, professor of Political Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. "Thanks to electronic filing, we've been brought into a new era, and campaign contributions are in the spotlight."

Redfield is the state's leading authority on campaign finance trends and has written two books about election financing in Illinois. He is the director of the Sunshine Project. Its goal is to increase public awareness and understanding of the role of money in Illinois politics.

Due to the advent of electronic filing of campaign finance reports with the Illinois State Board of Elections, most of the contribution records from candidates now are available in raw form on the State Board of Elections' web site. The ICPR has standardized and coded all of the contribution data from legislative and statewide candidates to make searches much easier and more complete. The ICPR's database also contains the records from legislative candidates who do not use electronic filing and are still filing reports on paper.

The ICPR web site, which will be updated regularly, also contains background information about other campaign reform issues, including judicial elections, voters' guide legislation, ethics law changes, and it includes links to newspaper articles about campaign finance and to web sites of other government watchdog groups.

The ICPR is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization chaired by former U.S. Senator Paul Simon.

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