Grantee Spotlight: BGA Shines a Light on Government

Congratulations to the winners of the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Investigative Reporting. The following reporters were honored today at the Better Government Association's Shining a Light on Government awards luncheon.

• "Reality Check: Where are the jobs?" WTHR-TV Indianapolis, Bob Segall, Cyndee Hebert, Bill Ditton

• "Tax Buyers, Politicians Benefit from Tax Sales" Belleville News-Democrat, Brian Brueggemann, Mike Fitzgerald

• "The Shadow Budget" Chicago Reader, Mick Dumke, Ben Joravsky

• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Meritorious Award for Commitment to Investigative Journalism

The Better Government Association is one of our Chicago area grantees shining a light on government and holding public officials accountable. BGA executive director Andy Shaw recently received a letter from an elderly South Side couple who were getting pummeled by the city bureaucracy. He turned it over to new BGA staffer James Edwards, who wrote about cleaning up the mess.

Beyond the frequent aggravation of red tape and lack of accountability, there are times when government does it right. New York Times columnist David Brooks notes that commentators and public analysts “spend little time directly observing what government is and isn’t good at.” His April 29 column salutes a federal program called HUDStat, which tracks homelessness among veterans and the results of the various efforts to combat it.