Last summer after the Democrats passed another record budget, we realized that if we were going to get control of the budget, legislators needed to know where every dollar was going before a vote was taken. Right now, the budget bill – read the FY 2025 bill HERE – is 3,389 pages of lines of text that shows appropriations to particular agencies, programs, non-government organizations, and sub-governments for billions of dollars. There’s no table of contents to find particular spending, the categories and grants are jumbled, and a non-profit could be receiving multiple grants in numerous grant lines. No one regular citizen or legislator can follow the money – only the insiders can.
Our first step in understanding the budget better was to organize the grants in a spreadsheet showing the page number in the bill, the amount appropriated in the budget bill and the organization’s name along with other related information, eg. address and website. When we then alphabetized the data, we could see how much a single organization was set to receive through multiple grants, all appropriated on different pages. Without doing the spreadsheet, it would be nearly impossible for an outsider to find all the appropriation lines without multiple FOIAs or a direct connection to the budget preparers.
Here is a screenshot of a few lines on our spreadsheet. Looking at Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, it is now easier to see that the organization is set to receive $4,125,000 for FY 2025 through 9 different grants each listed on a different page in the budget document.
According to their website “Brighton Park Neighborhood Council is an intergenerational community-based organization dedicated to equity and racial justice. Our mission is to improve the quality of life for the working-class and immigrant populations of Chicago’s southwest side through grassroots organizing and providing free and accessible social services and quality programs for youth and adults.” See website HERE
Our next step is to check out Illinois’ Grant Accountability and Transparency Act to see what grants GATA has recorded them receiving. We know just because the money is appropriated doesn’t mean that they received the money. Organizations are suppose to file somewhat complicated applications that are checked an vetted in order to receive money. How closely that process is followed is suspect – especially when it comes to proving that the grant money is making a difference. There is almost no outcome measurement. At best, grantees may be able to prove that they held a class, eg. on employment, citizenship, language development or a program on violence prevention or mental health, that they said they were going to hold in their application.
For Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, the GATA website shows they received the following grants.
Some of the grants listed are funded with federal funds. The organization’s largest grant is from the COVID era American Rescue Plan Act from FY 2023. It ends June 2025. In all likelihood BPNC will request state taxpayers backfill this grant. Will Pritzker do so? More importantly, will anyone look at what BPNC is doing and see if it is worthy of taxpayer money? Nearly all of the services they provide are typically provided for by park districts, schools, established organizations like YMCAs, or otherwise provided for in the private sector via an actual government payment system like Medicaid. At their website, the link to their “Meet the Team” returns an error page and the event page is blank. Their Facebook Page does show an upcoming bike ride, however.
Also on their Facebook page, dated April 8, 2025, is a warning to folks that Homeland Security agents were in the area and a reminder that people “have the right to remain silent and the right to refuse entry without a judicial signed warrant.”
The intent of our DOGE IL project is to bring these types of spending to light. Governor Pritzker has massively increased the budget since he took office. His proposed budget for FY 2026 is $55 billion, which is 37% higher than his FY2020 budget when he first took office. Where’s your money going? Taxpayers deserve to know.