The Chicago News Cooperative reports on the Chicago Way gone national:
At a time of record budget deficits and employee furloughs at City Hall, the flow of taxpayer dollars to a charity led by Mayor Richard M. Daley’s wife has risen dramatically, according to city documents.
After School Matters, which was founded by Maggie Daley and is still led by Chicago’s first lady, received almost $15 million from the city in 2009, mostly to fund after-school youth programs. That is an increase of more than 50 percent from the $9.36 million that the city paid to the group in 2008, and it is almost triple the amount that After School Matters received from the city in 2005.
The city reported giving the charity another $1.74 million so far this year, bringing the total to more than $46 million since 2005.
There's more:
The city also has funneled federal stimulus dollars to After School Matters. In a three-year, $1.31 million contract signed a year ago, the charity is charged with using federal funding to help low-income youth obtain job skills. The participants are between the ages of 14 and 24 and are paid $9 or $10 an hour for 4-1/2 hours of work each day, according to the contract.
In 2008, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that After School Matters also rakes in millions of dollars a year in donations from companies that have contracts with the city. The mayor has sworn off accepting cash for his campaign fund from city contractors, but nothing prohibits those same companies from giving to After School Matters.
For the Chicago Mob linked connection , click on
this. For a look at how another Daley family matter is doing with public money click on this
Chicago Sun-Times story.
