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Explore projects appropriated in the 2019 Illinois state capital package

In June 2019, the State of Illinois enacted a package of legislation to fund transportation, water infrastructure, natural resources, open space, school construction, affordable housing, and other projects. Appropriations for the capital package are found in multiple pieces of legislation that were approved together during the General Assembly’s spring session, with most of the specific projects and programs in one piece of legislation, Public Act 101-0029. CMAP has taken the 1,400-plus line-item appropriations from the Public Act and created a transparent and user-friendly way to search and explore the funded projects, which does not exist elsewhere.

CMAP’s interest is to better understand how the capital package may aid communities in the region with implementation of the ON TO 2050 plan. To catalogue the types of projects and programs funded as part of the package, CMAP staff converted the Public Act into a data table that can be explored and summarized in Excel and other statistical programs. The data table is available to download and the R script used to translate the bill can be accessed on CMAP’s GitHub page.

The table includes the appropriation amount, project grantee, bond fund, project details, and managing department for each line item in the public act, as it appears in the text. By separating the projects and programs out by the categories provided in the legislation, the table allows users to create summaries based on the information contained in the text of the public act, and flag projects by text searching for certain geographies or topics of interest. With some additional analysis, the table also enables users to find answers to questions such as how much funding was allocated out of the new Multi-Modal Bond Fund for potential transit investments in the region; or, how appropriations for geographically specific projects compare to funds that will be made available statewide.

The projects and programs funded in Public Act 101-0029 do not represent all capital projects funded in the package approved by the General Assembly, nor are the projects guaranteed to move forward. Appropriations, particularly for bond-funded projects backed by new sources of revenues, are contingent on the state issuing the bonds, which may not occur until new revenues begin to flow. Also, while many specific projects are included as line-items, other line-items designate broad categories of project types for which specific projects to be funded will be decided at a later date. Therefore, the list is not exhaustive of all projects to be funded by the capital package.

We encourage you to explore the projects and programs in the legislation by downloading the data or running the R code yourself.