Of the $50 million in political contributions from business, labor, professional, and issue interests to state candidates in 1999- 2000, $11 million came from the 20 largest contributors, according to the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform’s “Sunshine Database” (http://ilcampaign.org/top20). The Illinois Education Association ($1.4 million) and the Illinois State Medical Society ($1 million) were the only seven-figure donors.
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Great moments in public service. From the fall issue of “Woodstock Developments,” published by the Woodstock Institute: “Recently, on the one-year anniversary of the passage of Illinois’ predatory lending regulation, Woodstock and its colleagues issued a memo” on how the law was being enforced by the state Department of Financial Institutions and the Office of Banks and Real Estate. “The regulators were not aggressively examining the largest subprime lenders; did not have an appropriate fine structure to discipline violators; and were not releasing public information on examination schedules and results. Shortly after the memo’s release, Woodstock and other groups met with the regulators and discovered that they had finally fined a violating lender, whose name they would not release.”
“Supposedly ‘arts-poor’ areas…still contain significant amounts of informal arts production,” write Alaka Wali, Rebecca Severson, and Mario Longoni in a May report to the Chicago Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College. “In the community area of Grand Boulevard, for example, statistically represented as one of the more ‘impoverished’ neighborhoods in Chicago (median household income was $7,907 in 1990, population has decreased by 22 percent between 1990-2000), where one of our case studies was located, there are 78 places of worship with choirs, arts programs and classes in the major park in the neighborhood, a creative writing program at the public library, a coffee house that hosts regular spoken word open microphone performances, and several service organizations that are either offering arts programs or promoting neighborhood artists.”
