Illinois Local Governments own more than 270,000 vehicles –

SPRINGFIELD, IL. (ECWd) –

According to the results of a Freedom of Information Act request to the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office, local governments in Illinois have licensed more than 270,000 vehicles in this state.

Have you ever driven past a shopping mall, bar, or restaurant and wondered who was driving the vehicles with municipal license plates and what made them special enough to use taxpayer funded vehicles for their personal use?

Ever wondered how to figure out which public body owned those vehicles?

Look no farther…

We are working on an application that will be searchable by license plate number, public body, and zip code so citizens and taxpayers can identify those vehicles in order to question the public body as to its use of public vehicles. Initially only the “M” and “U” plates will be searchable.

We have the data, after our first FOIA request was denied by the Sec. of State’s legal counsel, my Request for Review to the AG’s PAC that was one day late (it was not acted on because it was late), and a second FOIA request that was honored by the Sec. of State.

The Request for Review detailed how the requested records were not prohibited from being released, and we presume the Sec. of State reviewed my complaint and determined the records should be released. We now have a spreadsheet which will be converted into a searchable application and will be publicly available.
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