Public Act 0077 104TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SB0213 Enrolled LRB104 05543 SPS 15573 b

Public Act 104-0077

AN ACT concerning business.

Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly:

Section 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the Government Advertising Spending Transparency Act.

Section 5. Findings. The General Assembly finds and declares:

(a) Illinois benefits from robust local news services that provide trusted and essential information to the community that limits corruption, encourages citizen participation, helps combat misinformation, and mitigates community and individual alienation.

(b) Local news in Illinois and throughout the country is struggling with newspaper advertising dropping 82% nationally since 2000, contributing to a 57% drop in the number of reporters at newspapers and thousands of closures.

(c) Local news outlets are trusted sources of information for communities throughout Illinois and advertising spending with these outlets carries a substantial benefit for the effective dissemination of important government information to the communities it serves.

(d) Government initiatives to increase spending on local news advertising have been manifestly successful in both supporting local news outlets and improving the information diet of communities in several major cities.

(e) The public has a right to know where government is spending its advertising dollars and what proportion of those dollars are going to local news outlets in this State.

Section 15. Reporting requirements.

(a) No later than October 1, 2026, and October 1 of each year thereafter, each State agency or department shall report the amount and distribution of its advertising spending to the General Assembly and post the report on its website.

(b) The annual report described in subsection (a) shall include:

(1) the overall amount of advertising spending made by the State agency or department;

(2) the names of each advertising vendor that received advertising contracts from the State agency or department and the amount of those contracts;

(3) the type of entity that received the advertising spending, categorized by media type, including, but not limited to, search platforms, national news outlets, digital platforms, and local news outlets; and

(4) the general subject matter of the advertising placement, such as military recruitment, public health, or job training.

(c) If a contracted vendor places advertisements on behalf of a State agency or department, the State agency or department shall make a good faith effort to collect from the vendor sufficient information to comply with paragraph (3) of subsection (b).