Illinois school districts have received more than $7 billion in federal relief money to help reopen schools and ease the academic and mental health fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

But a Chalkbeat/Better Government Association analysis found that a slew of high-poverty districts across the state have spent small fractions of their relief funds, despite serving students who were especially hard hit by the pandemic. Many are in Chicago’s south suburbs, where almost a dozen districts have reported spending 15% or less of their federal dollars. Bloom Township, where 72% of almost 3,000 students are low-income, has spent only 6% of its $20 million allocation, according to state data.

Statewide, districts have spent about $2.8 billion of the total they received, as a federal fall 2024 deadline is looming.

High-poverty Illinois districts have spent a smaller portion – about 42% – of their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER, allocations than wealthier districts, which have spent roughly 60%, according to the Chalkbeat/BGA analysis of state records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. These high-poverty districts received much more recovery money and have overall spent more per pupil than wealthier ones.

State officials have taken notice of the slow spending in some districts, but are not concerned.

Krish Mohip, the deputy operational education officer for the Illinois State Board of Education, said the state has reached out to some districts that have reported spending little of their allocations or haven’t yet submitted plans for the latest two of three COVID relief packages. But he said his agency is confident that — if districts aren’t spending the money briskly yet — they have solid plans to do so in the next couple of years. Spending is picking up this fall, he noted.

“With ESSER III, we still have a way to go, but we have a lot of time,” Mohip said. “We really don’t have concerns about the rate of spending right now.”

School leaders in the south suburban districts where the funds have been spent more slowly say they have confronted supply chain issues, hiring challenges, and other hurdles. Some said they have spent more briskly than state data suggests, but need to get caught up on reporting expenses.

Yet some education experts are questioning why some districts have been slower to spend their funds — emergency aid intended to help address the heightened academic and social-emotional needs of students. About 30% of Illinois students met reading state standards and about a quarter did in math this year, about 20% fewer students than in 2019, according to state data.

“If there are good ways to spend the money well right now, what are districts waiting for?” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. “Kids have been hurt both academically and emotionally. We want to know what they are doing now to make kids whole.”

In Chicago’s south suburbs, spending is slow

Among the districts slowest to spend COVID money are a cluster of about 15 south suburban districts, which serve overwhelmingly low-income Black and Latino student populations. Those districts have spent 14% of their federal dollars on average. That’s about $1,200 per pupil – less than half the average amount for high-poverty districts statewide.

Almost 80% of students in these south suburban districts live in poverty. About 12% of their students met state standards in reading on the 2022 state report card and roughly 7% did in math, showing marked decreases in proficiency compared with pre-pandemic.

Brookwood School District 167, a district that serves 57% low-income students, has reported spending only 7% of its $6 million — or $449,228 — as of mid-September.

Brookwood Superintendent Bethany Lindsay said delays in the supply chain have been a factor, pointing to the delay in getting four vans the district purchased to transport students to field trips and community events.

“It took a year to receive them,” she said. “So we couldn’t claim that until we received them.”

Lindsay said the district has focused on removing obstacles that impact academic, social, and emotional learning for its more than 1,000 pre-K to eighth grade students. For example, the recently purchased vans help remove transportation barriers and expose students to new experiences, she said. In Brookwood, almost 17% of students met state standards in reading, and 6% did in math on the 2022 tests.

“The pandemic really showed that vulnerable populations were going to be most impaired because they have limited access to things already,” said Lindsay.

In addition to the vans, Brookwood has spent its money to adopt a two-to-one technology initiative that guarantees students have devices both at home and at school. The district also added another social worker to each of its four schools and has built two new playgrounds.

Lindsay said the district will share updated spending figures with the state in a quarterly expenditure report due at the end of October – a report required of all districts.

In the coming years, Lindsay said, the district will build a STEM and performing arts center to increase representation in those fields and to give students a place of creative expression.

“People can experience that for 100 years,” she said. “So it really stands for something in the community.”

Other south suburban district officials had varying reasons for the slow pace of spending. Some noted that school building repair projects took awhile to get off the ground; others said they are still figuring out what learning software to buy. One district, Dolton West, is holding on to the bulk of its ESSER money to undertake an uncommon plan to embrace hybrid learning next fall. 

National experts say districts across the country have sometimes been slow to spend the federal money because they have grappled with how to make the best use of such a large windfall.

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Many districts worry about having to lay off new hires and cut new programs when the one-time money runs out. Hiring shortages and supply chain issues have crimped some plans to spend the money, and these issues can be tougher for high-poverty districts, said Marguerite Roza of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

West Harvey-Dixmoor, where almost every student is low-income, has reported spending 13% of its federal COVID recovery money as of mid-September, according to state data. The district, where 7% of students met state standards in reading on the 2022 test and 3.5% did in math, earmarked a portion of the latest COVID package to address learning loss as required by the feds.

But the two interim superintendents, who stepped in at the end of 2021, made a plan to spend most of the district’s almost $17 million allocation on building projects.

“Our facilities haven’t actually been updated in close to 20 years,” said interim superintendent Creg Williams.

Williams said it took a while for the district to line up contractors and bring in materials and equipment to ramp up these projects, which include removing asbestos, upgrading ventilation systems and a school cafeteria, and refreshing flooring, doors, and student lockers. He said the district also launched an extended day learning program this school year and hired a dean of students and an instructional coach, and fall reporting to the state will reflect much additional spending.

In Hazel Crest, superintendent Kenneth Spells also said the district has spent more briskly than the 9% of the district’s $8.3 million allocation that state data shows, though he could not provide up-to-date amounts for how much his district has actually spent. In addition to spending on COVID mitigation measures, Spells said, the district has hired additional teachers so it could staff co-educators in some larger classrooms. It also paid existing staff to offer Saturday school for students needing additional academic help.

The district, where 99% of students are low-income, saw reading proficiency dip to about 9% in reading and 3.5% in math during the pandemic.

“We’re seeing some progress,” he said, “but it’s still early in the game.”

“Story is still being written”

The data obtained by Chalkbeat and the BGA shows all federal COVID relief expenditures reported by Illinois’ roughly 850 districts by mid-September, and is broken into five broad categories: capital projects, supplies and materials, employee salaries, benefits, and outside vendor contracts.

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High-poverty districts have been more likely to put these federal funds into school facilities while wealthier ones have steered more dollars toward supplies and salaries.

Chicago has been an outlier among high-poverty districts in spending a large portion of its federal COVID relief dollars on salaries and benefits, largely for positions that already existed when the pandemic hit.

But beyond the broad categories, the state data offers little detail on what exactly districts bought with the money. And it doesn’t answer key questions, such as whether salary and benefit spending is for new or existing employees.

Jianan Shi, executive director of the parent advocacy group Raise Your Hand, says parents have generally wanted to see more urgency – and transparency – from districts in spending the federal money.

“We have seen districts small and large fail to be transparent and to include parents in decision-making,” he said.

What Shi consistently hears parents say they want to see: more outreach to reconnect with students and families who disengaged from learning during the pandemic; more staff in schools to support students; after-school programs; mental health support and tutoring.

Spending on facilities allows districts to use the one-time money without setting themselves up for layoffs or program cuts down the road, and some research has suggested a link between better school buildings and student learning.

Still, Shi said, “I don’t remember many parents saying, ‘Let’s just fix this issue in my facility with this money.’ We forget we are talking about students here.”

Mohip, of the state board of education, said his agency monitors the expenditure data districts submit closely, and staff has reached out to some districts to see if they need any help or guidance. He notes districts overwhelmingly met a recent federal deadline to spend the first wave of pandemic recovery money aimed at schools.

Some districts are holding on to the money for good reasons, he said. For instance, a district might have bought computers and other technology early in the pandemic, and might be waiting until closer to the end of the equipment’s life cycle to replace it. Others might still be working to fill new positions.

Ultimately, the money will make a difference, he said. “As of right now, that story is still being written. What we do know is that the money was needed and helpful at a time of distress.”

Other districts have spent COVID money briskly

Generally, the Chalkbeat/BGA analysis found, wealthier districts have spent their smaller funds briskly.

New Trier Township, for instance, has already burned through its $1.2 million allocation. The affluent school district in Chicago’s north suburbs serving nearly 3,850 students used the money for protective equipment, COVID testing, and other reopening expenditures. It also added two instructional assistants focused on math instruction and an academic interventionist.

But some high-poverty districts have also already spent most of the federal dollars.

Laraway, a small district about an hour southwest of downtown Chicago, has spent almost 80% of its $1.8 million allocation.

Superintendent Joe Salmieri said the district put some of the money toward hiring a teaching assistant for each elementary classroom to better target students who need more help.

“It was full-court press — all hands on deck,” said Salmieri. “Time is of the essence to address the negative effects of the pandemic.”

Initially, Salmieri said, the district struggled to recruit candidates, so it increased the pay and was able to fill most of the jobs this past summer.

The district, where almost all 450 students qualify for subsidized lunch, has also updated its math curriculum and ramped up after-school and summer programming. Salmieri said academic recovery is likely a “three-year journey.”

In Pembroke, an elementary district that serves 173 students, including 91% living in poverty, has spent 90% of the $3.4 million it received. Most of the money has been used on upgrading the single school building and tackling the pandemic’s academic damage, said Superintendent Nicole Terrell-Smith.

On the 2022 state tests, about 10% of students scored proficient in reading, and almost 11% did in math. To address this, Terrell-Smith has proposed that all students receive a personalized learning plan to help teachers tailor instruction to their academic needs. Currently, staff are getting professional development to help them to create these plans for the 2023-24 school year.

“I don’t want to have a beautiful facility but students who can’t read,” said Terrell-Smith.

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Back in May, the superintendent of Dolton West, a high-poverty elementary district in Chicago’s south suburbs, invited a group of educators to learn about “the next generation classroom.”

“I think it’s pretty cool,” superintendent Kevin Nohelty told them. “Way out there.”

In the vision laid out that day by a tech consultant and a sales rep from an interactive board manufacturer, the entire 1,890-student district would embrace hybrid learning. In each classroom, two or more large touch screens would allow the teacher to interact with students tuning in from home or from other classrooms. A camera mounted on the ceiling would track the teacher for those remote students.

Dolton West plans to spend the bulk of its $21 million in federal pandemic recovery money to bring a similar vision – one that melds in-person and remote learning – to the district, Nohelty told Chalkbeat. It’s a highly uncommon step for a district serving elementary students, most of whom are Black and living in poverty.

Nohelty says the hybrid learning plan will roll out next fall and make the district a national trailblazer, “unstoppable” if another pandemic or other major disruption hits.

Officials say the revamp would allow the district to proactively address teacher shortages and to rethink the school day and week, with students attending, say, three days in person and two virtually.

“The classroom would no longer be just the four walls,” Nohelty said. “You can be anywhere in the world and be able to engage with your teachers.”

Over the past year, some experts and student advocates have voiced frustration that few school districts are using pandemic relief dollars as federal education leaders urged: to boldly reimagine learning post-pandemic. Meanwhile, education tech companies are angling to capitalize on the influx of federal money by convincing school districts to double down on the technology that kept them going during COVID school shutdowns.

But for many educators, simultaneously teaching in-person and remote students was among the most challenging aspects of pandemic schooling. And online learning did not work well for many students – especially younger learners and those living in poverty.

Has Dolton hit on a solution to a slew of post-pandemic challenges — or is it setting out to address the academic fallout from the pandemic by giving students more of what contributed to that fallout in the first place?

Some experts question whether the district is giving itself enough time to pilot its plan, secure permission from the state to roll it out, and get input from families and educators.

The district, which serves the neighboring communities of Dolton and Riverdale, has not yet broadly shared its hybrid learning vision with parents and teachers beyond last spring’s focus group. The teachers union president, for one, says she only heard about the plan from a Chalkbeat reporter.

Loree Washington, a Dolton community leader and parent mentor whose son graduated from junior high in the district, said she would be skeptical about shifting any portion of the school day and school week back online without a pressing reason.

“The virtual learning environment was not successful for us — it just didn’t work,” she said. “So if you are offering more of that, what is your plan to ensure success? We know we can’t do the same thing and expect a different result because that would be insanity.”

Dolton looks to create hybrid learning plan

At Washington Elementary in Riverdale, principal Josh Markward says the pandemic pushed the district to become more tech-savvy.

Dolton spent much of the first of three federal COVID relief packages to close the digital gap, getting students computers and hotspots to connect to the internet at home. This school year, across Washington’s classrooms, tablets and headphones share desk space with textbooks.

Veteran educators such as Anita Pennington can be found at an interactive whiteboard, working on rhyming words with a pair of struggling second grade readers while their classmates do a reading comprehension exercise on their Chromebooks.

But the pandemic and the shift to remote learning also tested students in the economically distressed Chicago Southland district, where officials take pride in providing free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to every student, and in focusing on social-emotional learning and restorative justice since long before the pandemic.

Dolton, with a shrinking tax base, only receives about 70% of adequate state funding, by the state education agency’s own math. Washington and other community leaders recently joined a new statewide campaign to advocate for fully funding schools.

Citing COVID fears among families and teachers, the district remained virtual for the entire 2020-21 school year, making it a national outlier.

“Academically, (the pandemic) was tough,” Markward said. “Everyone took a big hit. Everyone was trying to figure it out, teaching on a computer screen.”

On the state’s 2022 standardized tests, 4% of Dolton students met Illinois standards in math, and 9% did in reading, both down slightly compared with before COVID. Chronic absenteeism jumped by more than 20 percentage points, to 53% of students.

After returning to full-time in-person instruction last fall, the district set out to address the damage. In a federal COVID relief spending plan submitted to the state, it said it would beef up its after-school programs and hire additional staff to help with students’ recovery, among other measures.

Then, officials shifted gears. Nohelty said he wanted to save the remaining roughly $20 million for a bolder, more comprehensive plan to rethink learning.

Nohelty says he was deeply shaken after watching the pandemic upend learning in his district — and feels it’s crucial that districts prepare for the next disruption now.

“I don’t want to go through that again and put learning on the backburner,” he said. Thanks to his hybrid plan, “We would be unstoppable — and I say that with passion.”

The hybrid model would give students who are sick, traveling, or missing a ride to school a chance to remain connected to the classroom, he said. That could be a game-changer for students with disabilities that make regular attendance challenging.

And, Nohelty says, the district would be prepared for staffing shortages, allowing educators to teach students in more than one classroom — perhaps with an aide or substitute supervising the students logging on from other classrooms.

“It’s what I would consider very cutting-edge,” Nohelty said of the district’s hybrid plan. “I do believe we are going to change the way we do learning in Southland.”

When Frank Brandolino of Joliet-based Velocita Technology came to meet with the educator focus group last May, he explained that his company has been developing a hybrid “solution” along with Nohelty and Dolton’s deputy superintendent, Sonya Whitaker. Besides the technology, the plan would also include extensive professional development, he said.

The interactive board rep demonstrated software that teachers can use on their boards that allows students to take quizzes, share photos, and “huddle” to collaborate virtually with each other. As many as 60 students can log on at one time, the sales rep noted. Teachers, meanwhile, can track whether students are actively engaging with the platform.

The portal, accessible from anywhere in the world, is the company’s “COVID child,” the rep said. Brandolino then showed a short video featuring a college History 101 class, in which four in-person and 16 virtual students collaborate on an assignment about ancient civilizations and then share their work with the class.

Teachers peppered the group with questions, some voicing enthusiasm for the portal’s features.

Experts raise questions about Dolton’s plan

Bree Dusseault, of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, says that it’s refreshing to see a district thinking about how the federal relief dollars can help reimagine learning. Overwhelmingly, districts have used the money to buttress a status quo whose inequities and limitations the pandemic underscored.

In surveys, high school students have said they want schools to look different after the pandemic, and some have voiced interest in the flexibility hybrid learning can offer, including for students juggling school with work, internships, or college-credit classes.

But, says Dusseault, remote learning was hard for younger learners. Given the planned fall of 2023 districtwide launch, a number of questions remain, Dusseault says:

Does Dolton have time to pilot this model on a small scale, then gradually roll it out based on data on student outcomes it collects along the way? How will officials reconcile the plan with state instructional time requirements and employee contract obligations? How will the district sustain the ongoing costs of the plan, including refreshing technology, once the federal money runs out?

Most importantly, how will the district ensure that students learning remotely part-time remain engaged in learning? Do all students even have a quiet, safe place to learn virtually?

Those were issues in Dolton during remote learning, when several teachers told Chalkbeat that some students joined in from noisy settings while others eventually stopped logging on.

“This district might be looking to implement a plan that’s not fully baked,” Dusseault said. “Innovation for innovation’s sake is not what we’re looking for.”

Both Dusseault and Bart Epstein, an expert at the University of Virginia and head of the nonprofit EdTech Evidence Exchange, are not aware of other districts adopting indefinite hybrid learning. There are good reasons for that, says Epstein: Expecting young students to stay home two days a week would be a hardship for parents and a challenge for teachers having to juggle both in-person and virtual learners.

“Having hybrid learning as an option for some students to use occasionally is a great idea,” he said. “I am not aware of anybody making the argument that permanent, forced hybrid learning is a net win for students.”

Dusseault stresses district officials need to be communicating about their plan with teachers and families and gathering feedback. Now.

Darlene McMillan, the head of the district’s teachers union, said she was reluctant to comment on the plan until the district spells it out publicly. She said staff vacancies are indeed an issue in Dolton. But the idea of teaching multiple classrooms using hybrid technology concerns her, and might be at odds with the district’s educator contract, she said.

Technology has powered learning in Dolton

On a recent Thursday afternoon, second grade teacher Richard Kealey stood in front of an interactive board in his classroom in Dolton’s Lincoln Elementary. He was teaching addition to the nine students in attendance that day.

A boy – dressed in the district’s uniform of white polo shirts and navy pants – had answered that 5 plus 4 equals 9. Kealey scribbled that answer onto the board with his finger and asked his students if it was correct.

“Don’t be shy, class,” he said. “Speak up!”

The students responded with a chorus of yeses. Then they put away their workbooks under their desks, donned headphones, and fired up their tablets. Kealey walked the room checking on students as they logged on to a math program called i-Ready, which offers a series of math games that grow easier or harder depending on how well users do — a program Kealey and Lincoln principal Byron Stingily credit with faster-than-projected growth in math.

Kealey estimates his students missed out on half a year of learning during the virtual stretch. A year after they returned to campus, there is still academic and social-emotional catching-up to do.

“It has been great to have students back in person,” he said. “Remote is really challenging on kids.”

During student pickup at Lincoln later that afternoon, some parents and students echoed that refrain: Technology: good. Virtual learning: hard.

Seventh grader Ja’Shawn McGee said bouncing back from remote learning has been tough. He is still trying to get back on track, especially in math and science.

“It was hard, trying to learn on a laptop,” he said. “I like being in front of a teacher.”

Eternity Lee said her son, Elijah, is also playing catch-up.

“He hated e-learning,” she said. “He missed his friends. He fell behind academically.”

She said she wants to see the district spend its federal COVID relief dollars on after-school programs and more one-on-one help with reading for her son, echoing the original spending plan the district had submitted to the state.

Nohelty says the model he envisions won’t simply reprise the virtual learning seen during the early days of the pandemic, but rather draw on its lessons to make technology work better for students going forward.

He acknowledged the district is going into uncharted territory. He is considering a site visit to high schools in California that have adopted hybrid learning. The district still must ask the state to waive some seat time requirements, step up public engagement about the plan, and work out the details of a pilot later this school year. He hopes to bring the plan to his school board in December and seek proposals from vendors next year.

Washington, the Dolton community leader who has served as a parent mentor in elementary classrooms for years, says educators need more help to catch students up academically, from tutoring to more after-school programs.

“If we’re talking about emergency funding, tell me what you’ll do to address the damage now,” she said. “What are we doing about student achievement?”

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Shortly after she left her state job as a senior adviser to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, longtime political operative Nikki Budzinski collected more than $500,000 in consulting and other fees in 10 months, including more than $80,000 from a Springfield lobbyist Budzinski helped while working for the governor.

At least $100,000 of that payday came from progressive organizations that don’t disclose their donors — despite Budzinski now running for Congress downstate as a Democrat in the 13th District on a platform that includes getting “dark money” out of politics, a Better Government Association examination of government records found.

The lobbyist who paid Budzinski $82,810 after Budzinski left the Pritzker administration is longtime Springfield operative Julie Curry.

A BGA review of state and federal public records shows a cozy relationship between Budzinski and Curry, who frequently reached out when her clients needed assistance, whether it was to set up a meeting with the governor for a client or access for an event at the governor’s mansion.

One expert said Budzinski’s actions after she left the Pritzker administration highlight weaknesses in Illinois’ ethics laws.

State workers are generally barred from accepting compensation as a lobbyist for one year after leaving government work. Since Budzinski was not a registered lobbyist, but rather worked as a consultant to the lobbyist paying her, Illinois’ executive order did not apply to her, records and interviews show.

“The law should also include work for a lobbying firm,” Southern Illinois University law professor and former lieutenant governor Sheila Simon told the BGA.

Budzinski, 45, declined a BGA interview request and would not respond to detailed written questions about her consulting business or work inside the Pritzker administration. Neither Curry nor Budzinski would describe the work Budzinski did for Curry’s lobbying firm.

“Nikki has always taken state and federal ethics laws very seriously and will continue to do so if elected to Congress,” her campaign manager Josh Roesch wrote in a brief email. “After Nikki left government, she was never a lobbyist, never registered as a state or federal lobbyist, and she complied with all ethics laws.”

A longtime political operative in Illinois and nationally, Budzinski had served as labor outreach director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign after serving in policy positions for unions for 10 years. She started as one of Pritzker’s earliest campaign aides in 2017 and later became executive director of Pritzker’s transition team before taking a state job as the governor’s senior adviser. The Pritzker campaign paid Budzinski $322,363 — making her one of its highest paid staffers, according to a BGA analysis of state election reports. Starting in 2019 as a senior adviser to the governor, Budzinski was paid $278,000 a year, among a handful of trusted aides who had their state salaries doubled after Pritzker dipped into his personal wealth using his company East Jackson Street LLC.

In public, Budzinski stood by Pritzker’s side at meetings with labor leaders and downstate public figures. Behind closed doors, she took part in weekly meetings with the governor, his chief of staff, the four deputy governors and Pritzker’s general counsel, according to the governor’s calendar and state emails. She was the governor’s point person on labor issues and Internet broadband, and played a key role in briefing the governor on gaming.

This BGA account is based on state and federal public records including email exchanges between Curry and Pritzker administration officials, the governor’s calendars, IRS filings, campaign spending reports, corporate records and Budzinski’s ethics disclosure forms. 

“Nikki is widely beloved downstate and is a close ally and friend,” Pritzker told reporters when she left state government in 2020. “She is also the first person who supported me, helped me to decide to run for governor and helped put together my campaign from our earliest days. As a senior adviser, she was a valued voice in the administration.”

Curry connection

At times, Budzinski used her voice in the Pritzker administration on behalf of a person she called “my friend,” Curry.

Unlike Illinois lobbyists who depict the Capitol Dome on their websites and tout their connections, Curry’s firm has no social media visibility and registers only her as its exclusive lobbyist.

Yet from the first days Pritzker took office in January 2019, Curry had the ear of Budzinski, government emails show.

Curry reached out to Budzinski that month to set up a Pritzker meeting with top executives from Curry’s client Centene Corp., the Fortune 500 Medicaid contractor.

“Let me circle back to you,” Budzinski quickly responded. 

Curry soon was in contact with the deputy governor for healthcare, Sol Flores, who helped set up an April 2019 meeting between Pritzker and the CEO of Centene.

Curry later sought Budzinski’s advice when she could not reach Flores and her deputy to iron out some last minute logistics with Pritzker’s appearance at a Centene ribbon cutting in May 2019 in Carbondale.

In addition to the Medicaid powerhouse Centene, Curry’s 2019 and 2020 clients included the cable industry trade group, a gaming company and local governments. 

Budzinski helped Curry in other ways important to the lobbyist by making introductions to top Pritzker staffers and providing Curry with details of the governor’s legislative positions and schedule.

Curry had been Macon County treasurer before serving for eight years in the General Assembly representing an East Central Illinois district. In 2003 and 2004 Curry was deputy chief of staff for economy and labor in the administration of then Gov. Rod Blagojevich, responsible for the management and oversight of 16 state agencies, according to the resume Curry provided to a state commission. She opened her lobbying firm in 2008.

Budzinski introduced Curry as “my friend Julie” in an email to Deputy Governor Jesse Ruiz after Curry got a $60,000-a-year state contract to be the legislative consultant to the Illinois Student Assistance Commission from the Pritzker administration. Ruiz was the deputy governor in charge of education at the time. Both the governor’s office and the commission said Budzinski played no role in Curry’s contract.

Curry requested Budzinski’s help in getting access to the governor’s mansion in March 2019 for an event involving the House Democratic Women’s Caucus, according to an email. The event was attended by the governor and first lady.

Curry also asked for Budzinski’s help in getting a cable company executive, who was also an officer for the Cable Television & Communications Association of Illinois, appointed to a working group of the state’s Broadband Advisory Council, which was advising the rollout of the state’s $420 million investment in broadband infrastructure, according to another email.

Budzinski was chairman of the council, and Curry was a lobbyist for the association.

The cable company executive was appointed to the state working group, records show, which gave her a prestigious role in shaping state policy. The Pritzker administration said the council by statute requires industry representation.

Budzinski, who briefed the governor on gaming, also forwarded to Curry information shared among the governor’s top staffers on the gaming expansion bill shortly before it was voted on in 2019. Two of Curry’s clients were in the gaming industry – the U.S. sports betting company DraftKings, and local gaming executive Rick Heidner, who was amid an ultimately unsuccessful bid to get state approvals to build a new horse racing track and casino in Tinley Park.

DraftKings and Heidner declined to comment.

The governor’s office said in an email that it “routinely shares bill analyses with stakeholders” to ensure they “understand what the governor will and won’t sign . . . Nikki did not have any role in the governor’s office in dealing with Heidner’s gaming issues.” 

Budzinski complied with all required ethics reviews before leaving the administration, the governor’s office added. In response to a public records request, the governor’s office provided 41 pages of emails showing Budzinski notified them that she would be working for Curry and others.

Dark money paychecks

Budzinski’s separate 2020 work for “dark money” organizations contrasts with her campaign platform to “get dark money out of politics by requiring disclosure of all large dollar donations” as she runs for Congress in the newly drawn 13th District. The district was redrawn by Democrats to include African American and university communities stretching from East St. Louis to Springfield, Decatur and Champaign. She is running against Republican Regan Deering, a Decatur community activist and scion of a prominent American agribusiness family.

Budzinski’s federal forms contain a variety of inconsistencies including the amounts she was paid and by whom. But they show the candidate received more than $100,000 from politically prominent Washington D.C.-based nonprofits that do not disclose their donors.

Budzinski took in $60,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which The Atlantic called “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money.” It was co-founded by former Clinton administration appointee Eric Kessler.

In a brief email to the BGA, Sixteen Thirty denied having “the major purpose of influencing federal elections,” and said it “empowers advocates and philanthropists to quickly and efficiently launch projects to tackle today’s toughest issues.”

In a Federal Election Commission complaint case, Sixteen Thirty said in 2020 it spent $60 million in contributions to federal political committees, out of $410 million in spending that year.

In one of Budzinski’s federal disclosure reports she listed a $60,000 paycheck as coming not from Sixteen Thirty but from a related group, Demand Justice, a courts-focused progressive group founded and run by former Hillary Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon. 

Demand Justice was established as a project of Sixteen Thirty, according to a Federal Election Commission filing.

Because Budzinski’s disclosure forms contain omissions and revisions, it is not clear whether that $60,000 is another reference to the work she did for Sixteen Thirty.

Demand Justice then and now advocates for reshaping the U.S. Supreme Court by adding four justices. A June 2020 Tweet from Fallon said: “Defund the police.”

Budzinski did not respond to BGA questions about whether she endorsed the positions of Demand Justice or other groups that paid her in 2020.

In 2021 Demand Justice spun off from Sixteen Thirty and became a separate dark money organization.

Budzinski also reported earning $48,000 from another organization, New Venture Fund, in 2020 for “consulting services.” Using trade names including “Demand Progress,” the New Venture Fund is a tax-exempt charity that says it works on global health, international development, education and the arts. It also was co-founded by Kessler. In 2020, New Venture reported revenue of $965 million from unidentified donors and said it gave $86 million to Sixteen Thirty.

In the Federal Election Commission complaint case, New Venture said it did not have the major purpose of influencing federal elections.

The nonprofit watchdog OpenSecrets has called New Venture and Sixteen Thirty “sister” funds that have used more than 50 trade names in ways that leave almost no paper trail.

“The complexity of dark money groups makes it more difficult for average Americans to understand who is bankrolling campaigns and issue advocacy, and how they stand to gain or lose,” said OpenSecrets Executive Director Sheila Krumholz.

In January 2021 Budzinski went to work for six months in the Biden administration as chief of staff in the Office of Management and Budget. Then she entered the race for Congress in the 13th Congressional District.

In early 2021, when Budzinski joined the OMB, she did not list payments from Curry or New Venture Fund on her federal disclosure forms, even though that was required. 

Budzinski later listed the Curry and New Venture fees on disclosure reports congressional candidates submit to the House clerk.

Besides the brief email from Sixteen Thirty, none of the entities for which Budzinski worked in 2020 responded to BGA questions.

As a congressional candidate who aims to champion working families, Budzinski says her state government accomplishments included helping pass a $15-an-hour minimum wage in Illinois and helping expand high-speed Internet across the state.

Her campaign website currently makes no mention of her time as a consultant, when she earned fees from Curry and the big-money Democratic groups.

Among the earliest supporters in Budzinski’s race for Congress were Pritzker and his wife, who each donated the maximum $5,800, records show.

Curry gave $2,900 a day before Budzinski formally announced.

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For generations, illicit drag racing has been an open secret at what’s now Chicago’s 297-acre wetland Big Marsh Park. Politicians have decried it, residents have complained about it and cops have gone to war with it. 

But these days, the city has a new weapon in its arsenal: $150 tickets for drag racers and spectators for parking in the bike lane.

A Better Government Association analysis discovered more than 520 of the tickets — carrying about $78,000 in fines — were written since the beginning of 2020 along this isolated stretch of Stony Island Avenue at Big Marsh. That’s nearly six times the number of bike lane infractions Chicago police have issued in that time along all of Milwaukee Avenue, one of Chicago’s busiest cycling thoroughfares.

In interviews with the BGA, racers said police show up in their squad cars to disperse the crowds, record their license plate numbers and send them tickets in the mail. The more cunning drivers dodge the tickets by racing without plates or by using illegal remote-control hideaway license plate covers — easily available on Amazon for as little as $50 — when they see squad cars roll up.

Despite the city’s attempt at enforcement, and a larger citywide crackdown, the Big Marsh racing has continued unabated, posing a danger for park goers and for the bicyclists who are brave enough to cruise down the painted bike lanes. In recent years, the park’s main road that’s most associated with drag racing has been the scene of dozens of car crashes.

“There’s nothing that would suggest there’s any enforcement,” said Paul Fitzgerald, Friends of Big Marsh executive director. “You can reliably feel like nobody gives a damn if you race a car there.”

From industrial backwater to outdoor oasis

Big Marsh, a reclaimed industrial site east of the Bishop Ford expressway, opened to the public six years ago. A privately-owned backwater of landfills and the steel industry for the better part of the last century, the wetland has since become a southeast side oasis for bicycling, bird-watching and trail-hiking.

When the land was closed to the public, the empty half-mile stretch of Stony Island Avenue made for an ideal drag racing spot — no through-traffic, no driveways, no cross streets, no mom-and-pop businesses or humans getting in the way.

Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza, whose 10th ward encompasses the park, said that her 84-year-old grandmother remembers people racing at the site.

“When we were cleaning up Big Marsh, you should have seen how many cars we pulled out of there,” she said. “Just this summer, there were three cars pulled out because they drove into the water.”

In March 2021, a 30-year-old Chicago man was ticketed after reversing his 2016 Dodge Challenger into the marsh while doing donuts, police records show. When police arrived, the car was “partially submerged” and he was “attempting to drive out of the water.”

This local tradition has proven very dangerous. According to city crash data, there have been at least 30 crashes with four “incapacitating injuries” on that stretch of Stony Island since the park opened in November 2016. None of the crashes involved cyclists.

Bike Lane Tickets and Car Crashes at Big Marsh Park

Chicago police have issued more than 520 bike lane violations to vehicles on the stretch of Stony Island avenue leading to Big Marsh Park since the ticketing practice began in December 2019. There have also been 30 crashes along the road going back to November 2016, when the park opened.

Sources: City of Chicago Finance Department, City of Chicago crash data. Map by Casey Toner.

Chicago police said they continue to “adjust resources on a regular basis to address problems like drag racing and other illegal activities.”

According to data analyzed by the BGA, Chicago police have issued three speeding tickets on the road leading to Big Marsh Park beginning in 2020, when the deluge of bike lane tickets began. They have not impounded any cars, issued drag racing tickets or made drag racing arrests on that road since.

Jason Henricy, 42, said that when he raced there in the early 2000s, police would position themselves at the south end of Stony Island, get a train conductor to park a train on the tracks on the north end of Stony Island and then write tickets to the racers stuck in between.

“There have been nights where they literally have given hundreds of tickets,” he said.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in August, a handful of racers gathered at the site and waited for challengers. The scene showcased the casual comfort of the Big Marsh racing scene.

Marking the track, a circled red X was sprayed on the asphalt along with the word “FLAGGER” to show where the flagger should stand, about ten feet away from a stretch of asphalt smeared with tire tracks and burned rubber — the apparent starting line.

One of the racers, a 21-year-old car salesman from Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood, drove a yellow 2014 Chevy Camaro with black racing stripes — the “Bumblebee” car from the “Transformers” film. In the last year alone, Chicago police issued him three $150 tickets for parking in the Big Marsh bike lane.

“Some of them are cool, and they’ll come through and will be like ‘leave’,” he said. “Some of them will come and get the plate and that’s it.”

Speed cameras at Big Marsh?

City officials and park advocates say that speed bumps or cameras are needed to put the brakes on racing, and they may soon be coming.

Fitzgerald, Friends of Big Marsh executive director, said that infrastructure changes are necessary because racing happens to a “cartoonish degree” at Big Marsh.

“There’s a lack of interest in really engineering these streets to be safe for the community,” he said. “I think people worry it’s a political liability to decrease somebody’s ability to speed. Drag racing is part of that.”

Ald. Garza said she is pushing to install speed bumps down Stony Island or score the pavement. But she drew the line at speed cameras, which she opposes, claiming that the racers would quickly destroy them with bats.

According to city records, 157 speed cameras citywide have issued 11.3 million tickets to drivers  in the past eight years. Posted near parks and schools, the speed cameras are designed to improve pedestrian safety by ticketing cars that go as fast as six miles per hour over the speed limit. At Big Marsh, racers can exceed 100 miles per hour.

Garza said that Chicago police are “stretched to the limit” responding to violent crime, curbing their ability to stop the racing. Even then, she said that a midnight police officer frequently disperses racing crowds at the marsh.

“The fourth district does what they can but it’s never ending,” she said. “They are there every week. Sometimes three times a week.”

The drag racing has stopped some from using the park as intended. Allison Beaulieu-Cholke, said she will take her children and dogs to the park in the daytime, but never in the early evening, due to the drag racers.

“The thing that terrifies me is anytime there’s that kind of behavior and alcohol mixed together,” she said. “And everyone is always drinking.”

The politics of drag racing

It is unclear why city officials have chosen tickets that amount to a wrist slap when harsher penalties are available.

Under political pressure stemming from high-profile drag races and car stunts that have taken place on Lower Wacker Drive and elsewhere in the city, the City Council approved an ordinance earlier this summer that empowers police to impound cars involved in illegal drag racing even if the driver is not there when the car is identified. 

Drag racing penalties carry fines up to $10,000 in addition to a $500 towing fee and a new $2,000 impoundment fee attached to the ordinance.

Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd), whose district includes downtown and is a longtime critic of the drivers, said prior to the vote that the motor vehicle shenanigans “skyrocketed during the pandemic.”

In late August, a 41-year-old pedestrian died after being hit by a man racing a Corvette near Midway Airport as several “street takeovers” brought stunts, such as drifting and donuts, and racing throughout neighborhoods in Chicago.

Neither the Chicago Park District nor the Chicago Police Department would detail their strategy into reducing drag racing at Big Marsh.

In a statement, the Chicago Park District said that it “is aware of the drag racing activity that takes place off park property outside of Big Marsh Park” and reports these incidents to the Chicago Police Department.

The City of Chicago, after receiving numerous inquiries from a BGA reporter, increased their surveillance at the marsh.

They wheeled out a temporary security camera and parked it in the bike lane.

Chicago Public Schools’ policy states special education classroom assistants can be invited to individualized education program meetings — a legally required conference for students with disabilities.

But local activists and parents say this policy isn’t widely known or enforced, and some think CPS discourages the assistants from participating.

Parents, teachers and experts say that leaves these children — some of the most vulnerable in the city — without their most knowledgeable advocates in meetings that determine the course of their learning.

District officials would not comment, but parents and teachers think the problem stems from staffing shortages and a lack of consideration toward paraprofessionals.

“I don’t think that CPS’ goal, when it comes to diverse learners, is to be helpful,” said Shani Blackwell, a mother to a disabled child. “I think that they are looking to do the very least that they have to do.”

The lack of transparency from CPS has cost Blackwell thousands of dollars per year, as she refuses to attend IEP meetings alone and insists on attending them with a lawyer instead. Blackwell went to the meetings for nearly five years before learning in July the district has an official policy allowing special education classroom assistants, or SECAs, into the sessions.

Another CPS mother stated she was frustrated to learn about this policy after having numerous IEP meetings for her three children. The mother did not want her name included in this story because she fears retaliation toward her children.

Blackwell and others who spoke to the BGA said mandating SECAs in these meetings would help students by providing a fuller view of needs and progress — a crucial component of their education.

The union that represents these assistants, Service Employees International Union Local 73, stated the involvement of SECAs in IEP meetings has been discussed in the past with CPS, as the topic comes up “frequently” among members.

“Our position is that one, parents should know that they have the right to request for their student’s SECA (to be) present in the IEP. And two, our SECA should be able to request to attend the meeting and not vice versa, which is what it currently is,” said Stacia Scott, executive vice president of SEIU Local 73.

The issue is vital to a substantial number of Chicago’s students. Nearly 50,000 CPS students, or 14% of children in the district, require IEPs, according to 2021 state data.

The SECAs “see themselves as advocates for diverse learners, and if they’re left out of the equation, in the space where these services, needs, growth and goal get determined, they can’t effectively advocate for the students that they work with,” Scott said.

SEIU Local 73 said it is preparing for its next contract and hopes SECA inclusion in IEP meetings will be considered.

A Complete Picture

James Shriner, an associate professor in the department of special education at the University of Illinois Urbana at Champaign said IEPs are crafted to address individual student needs, which can include academic help, behavioral and emotional learning.

“It’s information sharing, and it’s a very good thing,” Shriner said about IEPs. He emphasized the creation is “a team effort and not an individual teacher writing a program.”

However, these meetings can fail to provide a complete picture of the student, something SECAs know very well, said Kary Zarate, a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois Urbana at Champaign.

“The paraprofessionals are often the folks that spend the largest chunk of the day with kids,” said Katie Osgood, a CPS special education teacher. “The special ed. teachers or general ed. teachers are obviously interacting with the kids too, but often, it’s the paraprofessional that is the constant throughout the day.”

Although not part of the required staff for IEP meetings, paraprofessionals can be invited by parents or school staff, as noted by a CPS procedure manual.

Osgood suspects because it isn’t a requirement, the district does little to enforce it.

“I don’t think it’s being done maliciously by schools. I think it’s just like, ‘That’s not a thing that you have to do, so we don’t do that,’” she said.

Some parents say they want the additional perspective of the people who work closely with their children.

The CPS mother who feared retaliation said she was frustrated when her child’s school resisted including the classroom SECA at their latest IEP meeting. School officials said it wasn’t required, and they wouldn’t do it, the mother said.

She also said she was told SECAs are “just an extension of the teachers, and they do what the teachers tell them to do.”

The mother, who mostly speaks Spanish, said she only learned through her lawyer that paraprofessionals could be at these meetings.

It wasn’t until her lawyer emailed the district’s attorney notifying them of the request that the SECA was made available, the mother said.

CPS and the child’s school declined to comment on this specific interaction.

According to the latest BGA data, during the 2018 to ’19 school year, 4,013 SECAs worked in CPS, compared to 3,808 special education teachers. The following school year of 2019 to ’20, that number increased by an additional 395 SECAs and 167 special education teachers.

And as of August, SEIU Local 73 represents 4,800 SECAs, said Jazmine Salas, a communication specialist for the union.

The Backbone

At 7:30 a.m., Stephanie Tarr arrives at a Southside CPS school to begin her day as a SECA.

“We are the first to come in, and we’re the last to leave,” Tarr said.

Within 40 minutes of her arrival, Tarr sets up the classroom for the day and is ready to greet students as they trickle into the classroom.

Tarr said she was saddened to learn the district fails to inform parents that SECAs such as herself can be invited to IEP meetings.

“I’m quite sure that the parents who don’t know would request it,” she said.

She also said the inclusion of SECAs in IEP meetings would demonstrate respect for paraprofessionals, a gesture she and SEIU Local 73 often say is missing.

“You are most likely considered just another body there (at schools) and not that you have a skill set that you are ready to utilize to the best of your ability so that you can help the students,” Tarr said.

Tarr has two master’s degrees but said she thinks SECAs are not viewed as professionals because of inaccurate beliefs that they’re less skilled. Currently, an associate’s degree is required of CPS paraprofessionals.

Describing herself as a “lifelong educator,” Tarr said the role of a SECA allows her to create internal change, despite not having teaching credentials.

“Students call all of us teachers. Students don’t say ‘SECA’ and ‘teacher;’ they say ‘teacher’ because that’s what they see,” Tarr said. “They see an adult who is in charge of helping them to learn something.”

Scott said she hopes this inclusion can help create internal changes on how paraprofessionals are viewed.

“I think for most people when they think of a school, they think of just the teachers or the principal,” Scott said. “But we know that the support staff really are the backbone to public school. And so we’re undoing a lot of assumptions about the value of support staff in public schools.”

Brendan Cole, a now CPS special education teacher, formerly worked as a district miscellaneous employee for five years. He said many of his responsibilities mirrored those of a SECA, as he worked with students who required special education services.

Cole said the experience has informed him on how to be a better educator.

“The special education teacher draws a picture, but the SECA is the one to color it in,” he said.

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By the time word spread of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to reverse the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade, an Illinois-based hotline for one of the country’s largest abortion support funds was already about to close for the weekend.

When it reopened Monday morning, the staff was stunned to find 200 missed calls for help waiting for them. Overwhelmed, they had to shut down the line for the week — the first time in the Midwest Access Coalition’s 8-year history — just to catch up.

“We opened up the following Monday and, since then, we’ve been servicing about 50 clients a week,” said Alison Dreith, the coalition’s director of strategic partnerships. “We’ve finally started to average out and feel a bit more consistent but those first three weeks to a month were very chaotic…”

As Illinois begins to take its place as an island for abortion rights amid a sea of surrounding states banning the controversial procedure in the wake of the Supreme Court’s latest ruling, everyone from lawmakers to healthcare providers to advocates are bracing for record-shattering numbers of people seeking abortions.

Applications for physician licenses are already spiking, although its unclear how much of the increase is directly related to abortion services. Illinois legislation aimed at protecting abortion rights and providers is being debated.

President Joe Biden signed executive orders aimed at protecting abortion rights for travelers. Gov. J.B. Pritzker increased funding to protect access for those less able to afford it. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot set aside money to pay for lodging and travel services. Healthcare providers are pushing for more resources to meet a need they expect will break all state records as out-of-state patients cross over state lines seeking help.

Some of those records are already being broken.

One clinic in the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis saw a nearly 30% increase in those seeking abortions from June to August. In Chicago, one non-profit abortion support group served 4,000 clients this year, already 1,000 more than all of 2021.

“We’re expecting tens of thousands more people to come to Illinois,” said Alicia Hurtado, communications and advocacy manager at the Chicago Abortion Fund, a non-profit group to support abortion access. “We’re just hopeful we can continue to be there for our neighbors, but it’s going to take deep investment.”

Since it was founded in 2014, the Midwest Access Coalition supported a total of 3,000 abortion patients. Last year, across a 12-state midwest region, the coalition spent $120,000 on hotels, $15,000 for food and $55,000 on flights, according to its 2021 impact report.

The coalition’s fund helped 800 people in all of 2021. This year, they hit that number in July. As of Sept. 2, the coalition served 1,050 clients with meals, hotels and travel expenses, Dreith said.

“This is a healthcare issue, this is a basic human rights issue and we are in a crisis moment and Illinois needs to act legislatively like we’re in a crisis moment,” said Dreith. “Lives are on the line as far as freedom goes as we see more and more criminalization for providing and accessing health care.

“Access to abortion and these protections is not just about abortion.”

Abortion funding increased

Nearly 50 years after the right to an abortion was legally recognized throughout the U.S., the Supreme Court in June toppled the landmark decision with their 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The ruling was the culmination of a decades-long strategy by abortion opponents who say life begins at conception. The decision kicked off nationwide protests about the loss of a Constitutional right, and how low-income patients — especially those living in more remote areas of the country — will be the most affected.

More than half the states in the country — including the five surrounding Illinois — have moved to ban or severely restrict access to abortion. Indiana’s ban goes into effect Sept. 15. In Iowa, abortions are banned after 20 weeks of pregnancy and a more restrictive ban is working its way through the courts.

The only states in the midwest where no abortion limits are being considered are Illinois and Minnesota.

“It’s time to look at this area of healthcare and make sure we have the infrastructure we need,” said Brigid Leahy, vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood Illinois.

She said the state is already invested in being a leader in abortion access, and she hopes this newest crisis will renew that commitment with encouraging new clinics across the state and more funding for abortion support.

“There are two different parts of the conversation,” said Ameri Klafeta, a top official at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “One is what are the things that can happen right now or in the short term to help providers who are on the ground, and then there are those things that add additional protections, like shield laws with additional privacy protections. All are being evaluated.”

Klafeta, director of the Women’s and Reproductive Rights Project, said one positive step was Pritzker’s post-Dobbs decision in August to increase state medicaid reimbursements by 20%. That decision, according to one Pritzker news release, will help “to recoup more costs and enable providers and clinics to provide more care without financial strain.”

Pritzker also announced an additional $2 million in state money investment for family planning services for low-income people and families.

Shortly after the Dobbs decision, Pritzker and the top Democratic leaders even considered convening a special session of the General Assembly to consider new laws protecting abortion rights. However, it appears unlikely lawmakers will be called to Springfield before the midterm elections in November.

At an Aug. 30 news conference, Pritzker addressed his decision not to call the session, saying votes there would require Republican support he does not have.

“There are things that the legislature really does need to do, we need it enshrined into law,” Pritzker said. “And so again, those things are all being worked out where we’re talking to the legislature, working with the Attorney General’s office, but making sure that we’re making progress…”

Some of the measures lawmakers are being pushed to adopt include increased funding for existing clinics as well as new ones; more protections for providers who may come from other states to provide abortions; and legislation to allow advanced practice nurses and physicians assistants to perform abortions, according to BGA interviews with advocate groups.

“It’s clear that Pritzker is publicly in favor of protecting abortion access in Illinois and we’re hopeful he’ll listen to these policy pritoirities,” said Hurtado, of the Chicago Abortion Fund.

But she said it’s going to take more than “waves of support to sustain us through this new reality.”

Mayor Lori Lightfoot put $500,000 toward helping organizations like Chicago Abortion Fund and Midwest Access Coalition support people’s lodging and travel needs.

A City Council committee advanced legislation barring the Chicago Police Department and other city departments from assisting in investigations of those who come from out of state to get or provide an abortion related to laws in other states that restrict “an individual’s bodily autonomy,” the ordinance reads in part.

Some records already broken

Hurtado said the fund’s work has shifted since the Dobbs decision.

While the non-profit has always supported people from out of state, they’ve started to get calls from states they hadn’t helped before, like Arizona and Texas, as well as an increase from states across the region, like Wisconsin, Tennessee, Ohio and Missouri.

The abortion fund’s budget for patients jumped from $16,000 a week in the first three months of 2022 to around $25,000 after a draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked in May.

“And now, post-Dobbs, our weekly budget [for financial and logistical support] is between $35,000 and $45,000 each week,” Hurtado said. “It’s a really massive increase in scale and not just because of more people calling, but having many more cases requiring that deep case management, full-scale support, paying for people to travel longer distances.”

She spoke in support of mandating that private insurance plans cover abortion care without a co-pay, allow for advanced nursing and physician staff to provide abortions and for the state to invest in resources like the Chicago fund because they “make abortion access a reality, even in the face of a hostile landscape.”

The number of people they’ve heard from so far this year has already hit a record 4,000, 1,000 people more than the number of people served in all of 2021. In 2018, the number of people supported was 183. Currently the fund attempts to support 100% of the people they reach on their helpline, but Hurtado worries that may change without outside support.

At the downstate Fairview Heights clinic, which is under the umbrella of the Planned Parenthood Saint Louis Region, workers there have seen a nearly 30% increase in patients seeking abortions from June to August, going from 620 to 804.

The total number of patients in June, July and August rose to 2,130 this year, up from 1,689 last year, according to figures from the clinic shared with the BGA.

The clinic also saw an enormous spike since June in the number of patients coming from states outside Missouri and Illinois, two states in its service area. From June through August this year, the clinic served 698 abortion patients, up from 69 last year, according to data provided by Planned Parenthood officials.

The clinic is now open 10 hours a day on most days to accommodate the demand.

The BGA also sought metrics from state government to help illustrate the increasing demand, but they are more difficult to pin down because of a reluctance to single out clinics and physicians performing abortions.

More generally, however, the state saw a large spike in the number of physicians’ license applications since Dobbs, according to statistics provided by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

From June 24, the day the final Dobbs decision was released, to July 26 the department received 375 applications from Illinois and out-of-state residents for physician licenses, a 31% increase from the same month in 2021 — one that saw 286 applications.

In that same time frame, the state nearly doubled the number of physicians’ licenses it awarded, from 346 in 2021 to 662 licenses this year, though that number includes licenses awarded to applicants who applied before the BGA made its request.

Other states moving quicker

Jessica Davenport-Williams, a co-founder of Black Girls Break Bread, said part of her group’s abortion advocacy centers on equitable access to all.

Davenport-Williams pointed to state figures from March on maternal and child health services that show since 2016, there have been 16 obstetric unit closures, six facility closures and three facilities opened hospitals closures in Illinois — 4 full facility closures, and 14 facilities that closed their obstetric units — and three new hospitals that opened and provide obstetric services, reducing the number of places people who can give birth can go.

Those numbers are higher in economically disadvantaged communities and she and others at the non-profit hope that features into the state’s conversation around abortion access.

“It’s one thing to shore up what the rights are but that does not ensure equitable access,” Davenport-Williams said. “So I think there has to be a multi-pronged approach in having more stakeholders at the table.

“What does it mean for the low-income patient who is trying to get access at a health system or a local clinic? How does this trickle down and ensure that that person is able to receive the best quality and affordable care? There’s a huge data issue in Illinois — not just on abortions but on women’s health.”

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, leader of a state taskforce to consider the legislative response to Dobbs, said government responses fall into three categories: protection, capacity and access.

“This is uncharted territory,” Cassidy said. “The stakes are incredibly high so we have to get this right.”

She said the major focus is on a “need to craft legislation that we can pass” — from creating the smoothest path possible to keeping a license and making sure actions by other states don’t deter access in Illinois.

Cassidy said bills are in various phases of readiness and are being tweaked as the taskforce continues to hear new concerns or questions from stakeholders.

The ACLU’s Klafeta, and others who spoke to the BGA, said they’re watching and learning from what other states are doing — both good and bad — to “make sure we can do everything we can to help accommodate the people who come to Illinois for care.”.

One such state is Massachusetts, which last month invested $2 million into abortion infrastructure and set aside more funds for abortion providers. In California, a new law passed in June protects providers from civil liability from states with abortion bans.

“The reality is, in places like Southern Illinois and Central Illinois, border cities where we’re going to see more and more clinics opening,” said Dreith, of the Midwest Access Coalition. “I think we stand to have a lot more risk and what is the legislature going to do to make sure we can provide abortion care in Illinois?”

“I’ve seen for a few legislative cycles that Democrats in Illinois continually say that they don’t want to focus on abortion,” Dreith said, “but they’re going to have to.”

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s vast investment portfolio includes interests in a dozen for-profit companies that earned more than $20 billion in state business since he took office in 2019, a Better Government Association investigation has found.

In some cases, state dollars flowed to companies registered to lobby Pritzker, who as the state’s chief executive held enormous sway over their contracts.

The intersection between Pritzker’s personal bottom line and his role as governor comes despite his 2019 promise to divest his personal fortune of investments in state contractors and to transfer his multibillion-dollar portfolio into what he called a “blind trust.”

A BGA investigation of Pritzker’s holdings — including an examination of his annual economic interest disclosures, thousands of pages of state contracts, corporate filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Illinois secretary of state and gubernatorial email communications — shows at least 12 cases large and small in which the governor’s office and the agencies he oversees took action that created a potential conflict of interest for Pritzker.

Authorities on trust law and government ethics told the BGA because Pritzker must disclose each year what is in his blind trust, his promise to avoid conflicts of interest by remaining blind to his investments was both impractical and oversold.

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“The term ‘blind trust’ is being used here as a thin shield to conceal the governor’s pursuit of personal profits,” said Bridget J. Crawford, a professor at Pace University’s law school who reviewed the BGA reporting. “This is not a blind trust in any meaningful sense of the phrase.”

Pritzker declined a BGA request to be interviewed for this report.

Spokespeople from his office and his campaign responded in writing to some BGA questions.

“The BGA seems to be suggesting that because the governor is following the law, he is doing something wrong,” said campaign spokeswoman Natalie Edelstein. “Governor Pritzker’s trust is blind. This means he is not a part of any decisions, nor does he have any information regarding any investments. He receives no regular reporting on what the trustees and investment advisers decide to purchase and plays no role in any investment decisions. Period.”

Pritzker’s staff and his campaign office refused BGA requests to provide basic financial reports — full tax returns, a copy of his blind-trust agreement or a detailed accounting of his personal holdings. Pritzker also won’t say when he bought any of the stock or at what price.

In her response, Edelstein acknowledged Pritzker has not yet calculated the profits he accrues from stock of companies with state contracts — money he has pledged to donate to charity.

“If the governor receives any return from an investment currently held in trust that has state contracts, he will contribute the corresponding amount to charity,” she said, adding there will be a full accounting after he leaves office.

Pritzker’s finances have heightened importance as he considers a potential 2024 presidential bid. He has positioned himself with speeches to Democratic leaders in New Hampshire and Florida. If he pursues the presidency, Pritzker will face more detailed federal ethics reporting requirements and possibly a new level of public scrutiny into his tax returns and family trusts in offshore tax havens.

Company executives meet with Pritzker

Three of the state contractors in which Pritzker and his trust invested also registered to lobby Pritzker directly, including during the years his trust owned their stock, state records show.

One of them — by far the company in Pritzker’s portfolio with the largest amount of state business — was insurance giant Centene Corporation. Since 2019, its subsidiary Meridian Health Plan of Illinois has been paid $20.6 billion from its state Medicaid contracts and other health programs, according to a BGA analysis of voucher payments and annual reports filed with the Illinois Department of Insurance and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Centene has registered five firms to lobby Pritzker directly and three other firms to lobby the governor’s staff and the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, among other state agencies.

Email traffic and the governor’s calendar show Pritzker personally attended at least two meetings in the spring 2019 with top company executives who at the time were planning a $17 billion acquisition of Medicaid insurer Wellcare, the then-parent of Meridian.

Records show Pritzker also attended an internal phone meeting with his top lawyers to discuss the state’s required approval of a key part of the merger, a memorandum of understanding with state health officials being drafted at the time.

In 2019, Pritzker’s first year as governor, Centene faced federal antitrust scrutiny amid concerns it would control more than half the Medicaid market in Illinois and other states. To clinch the merger, Centene needed the Pritzker administration’s approval to swap thousands of patient accounts with other state Medicaid contractors.

“I can’t thank you enough for your help in setting up the meeting between Governor Pritzker, yourself and Michael Neidorff, CEO of Centene Corporation,” said Centene lobbyist Julie A. Curry in a March 29, 2019 email to Illinois Deputy Gov. Sol Flores.

Curry followed up with a July 30, 2019 email to Anne Caprara, Pritzker’s chief of staff.

“Anne, any help that you can give in getting the Governor’s Office to complete their internal review of the Centene/Wellcare MOU with HFS would be greatly appreciated,” Curry wrote. “Please let me know if you any questions or concerns. Thank you for your consideration and help!!”

In May 2019, Pritzker also accepted an invitation from then-CEO Neidorff to speak at a ribbon cutting for a new Centene facility in Carbondale.

Then in September 2019, Pritzker’s calendar listed an hour-long call “on Centene Merger” with seven top aides, including Ann Spillane, his general counsel, and her deputy general counsel. One of the attendees, Emily Bittner, the governor’s deputy communications director, downplayed the importance of the meeting as “general background on the issues relating to the Centene merger.”

“The GC and deputy GC were not asking the governor to make any decisions, only giving him background,” Bittner said in an email to the BGA.

In a written statement to the BGA, Spillane said it was her job — and not the governor’s — to “make final decisions” on the memorandum of understanding between Centene and the state Department of Healthcare and Family Services.

“I provided the Governor and senior staff with a detailed background briefing to address questions and to assure the Governor that all potential legal issues had been considered,” Spillane told the BGA. “I then advised HFS that the agency could sign the MOU.”

Bittner portrayed Pritzker’s meetings with company executives as insignificant.

“Governor Pritzker meets regularly with CEOs who do business in the state of Illinois, and he regularly attends events to celebrate the creation of new jobs throughout the state,” she wrote. “Our records indicate that the April meeting with the CEO of Centene was a brief introductory meeting and that the company was informed in advance that the meeting would not involve any discussion of the Wellcare transaction. The Governor was not involved in the transaction.”

In December 2019, with the approval of the Pritzker administration, Centene announced it was selling thousands of patients to another insurer, easing federal antitrust concerns.

In January 2020, Centene closed its deal to purchase Wellcare. That year, Pritzker’s trust bought his Centene stock, his ethics filings show. Also that year, the state oversaw a bulk patient transfer agreement that gave Centene a toehold in the Cook County Medicaid market, and Illinois activated Centene’s separate contract for the medical care of 36,000 juvenile state wards.

With these new lines of business secured, Centene subsidiary Meridian reported profits of $181.5 million on premiums from Illinois Medicaid contracts worth $5.2 billion in 2021. Those profits did not include more than $1 billion in management fees Meridian paid to its affiliates under intercompany arrangements, state insurance filings show.

Pritzker’s ethics filings show he made a capital gain from selling Centene stock last year, but the amount of the gain is not specified.

Neither Centene officials nor their lobbyist Curry responded to requests for comment.

Invested in 12 state contractors

Pritzker was notified of his holdings in Centene in 2021 when it was listed among the 300-plus entities on his annual economic disclosure filings, a report required of all elected officials. Those disclosures require public officials to list all holdings worth more than $5,000. The specific value of the holdings does not have to be disclosed, nor would Pritzker provide it.

The BGA first reported his trust’s Centene investment in February. At that time, the Pritzker administration said he was not involved with Centene.

“The governor is not involved in the contracting process related to Centene,” Jordan Abudayyeh, Pritzker’s communications director, told the BGA. “There is nothing he would have to recuse himself from.”

Questioned by Chicago media days later, Pritzker made a striking admission: The governor said he only learned of his investment in Centene when the BGA contacted him about it.

“I only learned that literally because a reporter called last week from BGA,” Pritzker told WGN News at the February press conference.

“By law, I have to sign a statement of economic interest. I think that’s a terrific thing. The state should keep that in place. I sign that every year,” Pritzker said, scrolling his right hand in the air as if signing a document.

“I get it, I go to the signature page, and I sign it every single year,” he said.

When signing his annual Illinois Statement of Economic Interests forms, Pritzker attested the list of his investments was “correct and complete.” The penalty for willfully filing an incomplete or false statement can include imprisonment for up to one year and a fine that is currently up to $2,500, his most recent state disclosure form says above his signature.

Based on Pritzker’s suggestion he did not verify his disclosure statements, the BGA enlisted a team of DePaul University journalism graduate students to help analyze whether hundreds of entities in Pritzker’s four ethics statements filed since 2019 had state business.

Pritzker retained stock in five companies that already held state contracts when Pritzker placed those stocks into his trust, the BGA found. These included stock in two rail companies that play roles in the $3.4 billion expansion of toll roads surrounding O’Hare International Airport, a key Pritzker administration infrastructure priority.

And after Pritzker took office in 2019, his trust invested in seven more companies that have held contracts with Illinois state agencies Pritzker oversees, the BGA found.

In one example, Pritzker’s trust last year acquired stock in Apple Hospitality REIT Inc., which owns hotels across the United States, including the Hampton Inn & Suites in Skokie. In February, the Illinois Department of Human Services signed a $1,087,920 contract with Apple Hospitality to house Afghan refugees in 104 rooms at the Skokie hotel.

Among other companies with state business in which Pritzker is invested are CSX, JPMorgan Chase & Co., United Healthcare, Morgan Stanley, BNSF Railway, Union Pacific, Marriott and U.S. Foods. For more on each investment and the company’s state business, click here.

Pritzker’s impossible pledge

Pritzker took office in 2019 promising to divest his portfolio of companies that did business with the state and put his remaining stocks into a blind trust.

“Governor-Elect Pritzker is divesting his personally held direct interests in companies that have contracts that are wholly or partially funded with state dollars,” said a 2019 public statement by top Democratic Party attorney Marc Elias, who advised Pritzker on establishing his trust.

“He is committed to taking all steps necessary to comply with Illinois ethics rules and to promote transparency and accountability to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in the Governor’s Office.”

Experts interviewed say Illinois law requiring Pritzker to list his assets renders it impossible for him to keep his pledge to remain blind to decisions made about his investments.

“To me, the more troubling thing is that he just signs the ethics statement without reading it,” said Anne-Marie Rhodes, a professor at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a specialist in estate planning.

“It sounds like a very human response: We all sign things without fully understanding what we’re signing. Everyone who’s ever been to a doctor’s office gets all these papers — if you actually read them, you would miss your appointment,” Rhodes said. “But I think we should expect someone who’s signing an ethics statement to at least have looked at it.”

As governor-elect, Pritzker promised to make charitable contributions matching gains in his trust’s holdings from entities that hold state contracts.

On his ethics disclosures, he reported income and capital gains from transactions involving 11 of the 12 companies that did business with the state while he invested in their stocks. Pritzker declined to reveal whether he had donated to charity based on his earnings from these 11 stocks or others since he took office.

Grace Golembiewski is one of seven DePaul University journalism graduate students who provided research for this article, along with Abena Bediako, Quinn Castaneda, Andrea Cato, Kayla Minor, Juliana Pelaez and Darryl Washington. DePaul journalism program chair and associate professor Jason Martin contributed.

BGA reporters Sandy Bergo and Jared Rutecki contributed to this report.

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A former Cook County government employee who pleaded guilty to vote fraud in 1985 is now running for election to the Cook County Pension Board, an estimated $6.9 billion retirement fund serving nearly 14, 000 public sector retirees.

The candidate is 65-year-old retiree Christine M. Trzos, who pleaded guilty to a one-count misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to pay a $500 fine and serve a year of court-supervised probation, which she completed. Trzos is running for Cook County annuitant trustee, an obscure but potentially influential decision-making position on the pension board.

Trzos has not mentioned her brush with the law in any of the biographical information she’s made available online to the retirees who are choosing between her and incumbent opponent John E. Fitzgerald, a former executive director of the Cook County Pension Fund. The election for annuitant trustee, an unpaid position, is being held Wednesday, but thousands of retirees have for weeks been casting their ballots by mail.

“Is that what you put on a resume?” Trzos told the Better Government Association in an interview. “This is something that’s nearly 27 years old. I don’t think it has any relevance.”

Trzos was among three people named in a November 1984 election fraud indictment brought by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, according to court documents. In March 1985, Trzos pleaded guilty to submitting a false and forged ballot in the name of her mother, court documents state.

Trzos was an election judge at the time and living on Chicago’s Southwest Side.

After accepting Trzos’ guilty plea, federal authorities notified the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, which employed her. Trzos continued to work for the sheriff’s department, totaling nearly 23 years in various administrative and support jobs.

Apparently, Trzos’ past legal indiscretion didn’t faze one of the public employee unions representing retirees. In September, Teamsters Local 700 endorsed Trzos, saying she would bring a “fresh perspective” to the Cook County Pension Board.

Trzos claims she told the Teamsters representatives about her guilty plea “right upfront and they laughed.”

“They said: ‘This is a 27-year-old misdemeanor,’” said Trzos.

Representatives of Teamsters Local 700 declined to comment.

In addition, Trzos’ past poses no barrier to her running for or holding the annuitant trustee position.

The law that creates the Cook County Pension Board does not prohibit any retiree found guilty of a crime from participating in trustee elections or from being a board member, according to Joseph Griseta, an outside counsel and private attorney who is monitoring the administration of the current pension board election for the county.

The Cook County Pension Board has nine trustees who oversee the fund’s financial performance and its financial advisers. In addition to the estimated 14,000 retirees, nearly 24,000 current employees pay into the fund.

Trzos contends that instead of focusing on her past “mistake,” Cook County retirees are more concerned about the fate of their pension fund, which suffered a decline of nearly $2 billion in assets since the recession began in 2008.

“Our money needs to be watched more carefully,” she said.

This blog entry was reported and written by Robert Reed. Contact BGA with tips, suggestions and complaints at , or at rherguth@bettergov.org.

The safety and security of passengers should be the CTA’s top priority.

So it was encouraging to see the transit agency produce a hard-hitting and scathing internal report delving into the circumstances of a scary subway fire and train evacuation that occurred June 20 on the system’s northbound red line between the Chicago and Clark/Division stations.

Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt.

Unfortunately, CTA riders and taxpayers might never have known of this confidential report if it had not been obtained by the Better Government Association, which collaborated on an investigative story with Fox’s WFLD/Channel 32 News.

While one of the BGA’s missions is to disclose such government reports, it’s really the CTA’s responsibility to come clean. The agency should have gone public with its findings, posted its warts-and-all report online and then made its leaders available to media and public scrutiny.

By taking the route of full disclosure, the CTA would have sent the vitally important message that passenger safety and security is Job One and when things go wrong they get fixed.

In addition, the CTA could have used this occasion to draw attention to the stepped-up safety measures now being taken. Many of those efforts are already outlined on the CTA website along with a seven-minute video (see below) highlighting the proper safety and evacuation procedures for exiting a subway during an emergency.

Yet even these measures risk going unnoticed. Finding the safety and security section on the CTA website is a challenge, and the agency’s overall public outreach could be better. To save you a few steps here’s the safety and security section: http://www.transitchicago.com/safety/default.aspx.

Maybe the CTA should also develop an emergency subway evacuation application for mobile phones? Or email a link of its video to passengers who buy a Chicago Card?

Whatever the approach, the CTA must realize that an informed and engaged public is the transit agency’s best traveling companion.

If you agree, let the CTA know about it by sending your comments to the Office of the Inspector General:

Phone: (773) 282-8463

E-mail: hotline@ctaoig.net

In writing:

P.O. Box 641075

Chicago, IL 60664-1075

In person:

567 West Lake Street

8th Floor

Chicago, IL 60661

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One of the nation’s most influential financial analysts sees big trouble ahead for Illinois.

Meredith Whitney is sounding the alarm about the dire fiscal condition of the nation’s 15 largest states. Illinois ranks second on Whitney’s list of the worst states, putting it in a tie with New Jersey and Ohio. California is the country’s biggest financial disaster, according to a recent study by Whitney’s namesake firm.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-7lB-IIg04]

Whitney chides Illinois for its bloated deficit (nearly $14 billion) and for maintaining chronically under-funded public pension plans. Making matters worse: Lawmakers refuse to confront this reality and forge a long-term financial rescue plan, she says.

Elected officials — especially those running Illinois — would be wise to heed Whitney’s brutally honest appraisal especially since it carries significant weight with investors who buy the state’s bonds.

Investors remember that in 2008, when cock-eyed optimists said the banking and housing crisis had bottomed out and better days were coming, it was Whitney who correctly predicted the pain would linger for years and the economy would decline.

Now, Whitney contends the states’ collective deficits and other obligations are so onerous that the federal government may be forced to bail out insolvent states just as it did banks. That will really tick off people in Texas, Virginia, Washington and North Carolina — states that are in better financial shape than their counterparts, according to Whitney’s report.

>> More alarm bells…

Mark your calendars for 2019.

That’s when the City of Chicago will officially run out of money to pay its public pension obligations with its existing financial resources, according to a new study by business and economic experts at Northwestern University and the University of Rochester.

The report, “The Crisis in Local Government Pensions in the United States,” says Chicago and Boston will run out of money to cover those debts by 2019. That’s a little better than Philadelphia, which could be tapped out by 2015, according to the study.

Joshua Rauh of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester authored the report, which sounds yet another alarm bell over the mounting public pension debt crisis at the local and state levels.

They determined that 42 cities (including Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia) are expected to suffer public pension meltdowns by 2030. That’s when those municipalities will run out of money to cover local pension obligations.

For more on this report go to: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/News_Articles/2010/municipal-pension-systems.aspx

By Robert Reed, Director of Investigations