* Lots of time for lawsuits against the House Speaker, but no time to read a pardon? That’s the story from the Blagojevich administration on why he pardoned Chandra Gill so she could become the director of a school that got a million dollar state grant to rebuild fire-ravaged Pilgrim Baptist Church….
[William Quinlan, general counsel to the governor] said he forwarded the recommendation of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board to the governor to pardon [Chandra Gill] without reading Gill’s full petition, in which she stated her connection to the school and made reference to the then-pending $1 million grant.
“I didn’t mean to mislead anyone,” Quinlan said.
The governor’s office later issued a statement saying Blagojevich did not know about Gill’s connection to the school when he approved her pardon and the expungement of her aggravated battery conviction for a 2002 fight with an Urbana police officer.
*** UPDATE *** From the governor’s office…
The article in today’s Tribune regarding the Gill pardon misstates the comments Mr. Quinlan made about the pardon process. The full petition was absolutely reviewed by legal counsel when it was submitted to our office and decided upon in January 2007. Mr. Quinlan advised the Tribune reporter that because Ms. Gill’s petition had been returned to the Prisoner Review Board in early 2007 after a decision on the petition had been made, he had reviewed internal memos on the case that are stored in our office — not the full petition — before he was asked about it following yesterday’s press conference on the Illinois Works coalition. The statement in today’s article is patently false and does not in any way reflect the process in which Ms. Gill’s petition was reviewed.
* OK, so let’s back up a minute here.
Gill gets a pardon that wasn’t read. Rev. Jesse Jackson and other African-American leaders were apparently pushing for Gill’s pardon. Her school is apparently helped by the administration with a 501C-3 application so that it can receive the million dollar grant. Details are ignored or overlooked that would preclude the grant from being awarded in the first place…
A provision in Loop Lab School’s state grant contract required the school to affirm it was not “subject to any cease and desist order” before getting the money in March 2007, money it used to acquire and renovate space at 318 W. Adams.
Two months before the school signed off on its $1 million deal with the state, the Illinois Human Rights Commission ordered the school to pay damages to a former kindergarten teacher who complained she was sexually harassed by a school official and then threatened with firing by another — a judgment that Blagojevich’s administration said the school did not disclose.
Besides awarding more than $40,000 to the teacher, the commission ordered that the school “cease and desist from further acts of sexual harassment” and “from further acts of unlawful retaliation.”
Oops.
The million dollars is then used to buy a floor in a Loop building far away from Pilgrim Baptist Church which happened to be developed by a federal mole who was helping the feds investigate Tony Rezko (the grant awarding state agency is run by a former Rezko employee, by the way). The school, whose former students now live quite a distance from its new location, isn’t open for business yet. School officials aren’t talking to the press.
This is the most high profile million dollar grant of Blagojevich’s entire administration and he either royally screwed it up or did something hinky. Either way, it represents a microcosm of the administration. Splashy and controversial announcement, everybody who is anybody is involved, no follow-through or corrupt maneuvering, governor throws his aides under the bus and won’t accept any blame, and it all ends up as a freaking mess which attracts yet another investigation.
By the way, to give you an idea how utterly bizarre this situation is, my intern Kevin knows Chandra Gill. She was a TA of his at the University of Illinois.