62 Illinois Legislators Violated the Legislative Scholarship Program, and Everyone’s Pointing Fingers

Chicago Talks reports:

Sixty-two members of the Illinois General Assembly broke the law over the course of six years by awarding free tuition to the state’s public universities to 122 college students who didn’t live in the right legislative district.

The state lawmakers – several of whom serve in leadership positions – violated the law they had passed in the 1970s, the last time major changes were made to the century-old legislative scholarship program. Controversy over the program flared again this past year after a series of articles by ChicagoTalks that found repeated instances of scholarships being awarded to campaign donors, politically connected families and, in at least one instance, a lawmaker’s relative. ChicagoTalks also identified five legislators who require scholarship applicants to register to vote, a practice one constitutional lawyer called illegal.

More recently, the Chicago Tribune reported that a former state lawmaker gave nearly $100,000 in scholarships to the family of a longtime political supporter, raising questions about the loose enforcement of eligibility requirements.

Lawmakers doled out more than 6,000 scholarships totaling tens of millions of dollars from fall 2003 through summer 2008. ChicagoTalks checked the addresses of every student who received one or more of these awards by entering each into the Illinois Board of Elections’ district locator to confirm the student did in fact reside in that lawmaker’s district.

Attention Patrick Fitzgerald: does this bother you? No word yet from former Illinois State Senator Barack Obama on this story.