The Fiscal Futures Project is dedicated to informing the public and policymakers about state budget transparency and long-term budget concerns. Three central elements are:
- The creation and maintenance of a comprehensive and consistently defined measure of the Illinois state budget.
- The capacity to project Illinois state spending and revenue streams into the future under current or alternative policies.
- The comparison of budget transparency issues across states--a search for best practices
The work of the Fiscal Futures Project is supported by a generous grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Our Latest Research: Two New Studies
“Transparency in State Budgets: A Search for Best Practices”
"A major impediment to understanding how much trouble state governments are in is a lack of transparency in the way their budgets are presented. Defining and measuring budget transparency is a necessary first step toward achieving increased understanding.”
"In order to have a comprehensive measure of the state budget that is consistently defined over time, we constructed a consolidated funds budget that tracks 380 state funds instead of just the four more commonly reported general funds.”
