(Chicago Tribune photo)
CHICAGO – Sure, Illinois is $15 Billion behind in bills to doctors, hospital and clinics, among other taxpayer- funded public services – but guess where $7.3 million of your hard-earned state income tax dollars have gone?
Thanks to House Speaker Mike Madigan's wife Shirley and the Illinois Arts Council, 21 television stations throughout the state have millions more dollars to spend – despite already sitting on millions in assets.
Those media recipients certainly must be grateful to you, Illinois taxpayers. That's why they provide such balanced political news coverage, right?
But Mrs. Madigan's power to grant taxpayer dollars can be also used to curry positive coverage of her husband's 34 year reign of the Illinois House, Adam Andrzejewski of OpentheBooks.com writes in this week's Forbes expose.
He calls on Governor Rauner to not re-appoint Mrs. Madigan and the current cooperating council, whose latest term expired two weeks ago.
Seven of the top ten largest grant recipients were television and radio station nonprofits – not traditional arts groups. It’s easy to see that the Madigans want to curry political favor with radio and television media – $7.3 million to 21 stations buys a lot of favorable coverage.
Consider the details:
- Since 2012, WTTW Communications won funding of $2.5 million and was the largest recipient of Illinois Arts Council funding despite $50 million in revenue and $72 million in financial assets.
- WBEZ Chicago Public Media – a national public radio affiliate – received nearly $800,000 despite $57.2 million in assets.
- WILL – an AM/FM and television partnership between the University of Illinois, Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio based in Urbana – received $990,865 despite annual revenues of $10 million.
- WSIU in Carbondale received $845,822 despite annual revenues of $4 million.
Outside of radio and television funding, the Illinois Arts Council gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to some of the richest arts organizations despite their impressive balance sheets. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra nearly $300,000 while controlling assets of $528.7 million. The Art Institute of Chicago received nearly $235,000 notwithstanding its $1.5 billion asset base. The University of Chicago received $114,100 in funding despite assets totaling $12 billion.
There's much more in Andrzejewski's column – it's a must read HERE.
