If you are among the one in six eligible voters who participate in local elections, you may have experienced a sense of anxiety upon glancing at a ballot.

You may have looked at lists of names of multiple candidates for municipal, township, park district, elementary school district, high school district, library district, community college district, sanitary district, fire protection district, regional board of school trustees and other offices and faced a tough question.

Last summer, Navy Pier got a $2.48 million Payroll Protection Program loan, part of the federal government’s pandemic relief effort. How was that money spent? Who knows? Even though Navy Pier is owned by a public body, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, and even though taxpayer money goes into Navy Pier, the authority and the nonprofit set up to run Illinois’ biggest tourist attraction cloak the pier’s financial records in secrecy.

For more than six years, the Better Government Association has been fighting in court to pry open those records. Last November, the Illinois Appellate Court agreed with the BGA, ruling that the nonprofit, Navy Pier Inc., “performs a governmental function on behalf of the MPEA, and the records BGA requested directly relate to (Navy Pier’s) performance of that governmental function.” McPier — its governing body includes four mayoral and four gubernatorial appointees and an executive director earning more than $540,000 — appealed the ruling to the Illinois Supreme Court, which recently sent the case back to the trial court.