Chicago 2011 Inauguration Donors Added to ICPR's Sunshine Database
Last night, Chicago 2011 Inauguration, an organization formed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to solicit donations for festivities around the swearing-in of Chicago elected officials, announced the names of 90 donors, who contributed over $1.1 million in total. Today, the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform (ICPR) announced that we have added these donors to our Sunshine Database, the only searchable database of all political committees for all candidates and incumbents in statewide, legislative, Cook County, and City of Chicago office.
ICPR's Sunshine Database, available on-line at ilcampaign.org, can be searched by candidate name, the office they hold or seek, the name of a particular donor, or by a voter's home address. Chicago 2011 Inauguration donors can be found by putting "Inauguration " in the candidate's last name field or by searching candidates for Chicago Mayor in the 2011 database.
ICPR's Sunshine Database has been updated to include all contributions to statewide officials, legislators, and incumbents and candidates for Chicago and Cook County office, reported to the State Board of Elections as of 9 am of September 2. These include contributions reported on paper in the first half of the year as well as those reported electronically. Approximately 90% of the contributions have been identified by the donor's financial interest.
Illinois began to limit donations to candidate's campaign funds in January of this year, but inaugural committees are outside of the campaign finance system. There are no legal limits on how much a donor can give to an inaugural committee, and just over 40% ($470,000) of the funds raised by the inaugural committee came from donors who gave more than they could legally give to a Political Action Committee.
ICPR is a non-partisan public interest group that conducts research and advocates reforms to promote public participation in government, address the role of money in politics and encourage integrity, accountability, and transparency in government. ICPR was founded by the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon and former Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra.
