* Chalk up another indiscreetly closed chapter in the too-long Blagojevich saga…
State efforts to recoup $1 million that impeached ex-Gov. Blagojevich said he errantly gave to Loop Lab School yielded Illinois taxpayers a paltry $89,000, Illinois Auditor General William Holland disclosed Thursday.
That finding, which triggered new questions about the role Gov. Quinn’s current chief of staff had in the Loop Law school grant, was part of a broader analysis by Holland of how the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity did a poor job of keeping tabs on some of the $1.5 billion in grants it oversaw. […]
The state’s recovery of only 9 percent of the original grant to Gill’s organization — a process undertaken by the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and Attorney General Lisa Madigan — came despite the court-approved sale last January of the former school property for $750,000.
Most of the proceeds from that sale wound up being eaten up to pay off a portion of a $305,000 loan Loop Lab School took out from Republic Bank, along with $160,000 in unpaid condominium association assessments, nearly $80,000 to fix out-of-code construction undertaken by the school, a $43,219 federal tax lien and various city and county taxes, court documents show.
“We made every effort to recover the state’s money. But the bottom line is this grant should never have been given in the first place, and it’s yet another example of the toll former Gov. Blagojevich’s reckless actions have taken on the state,” Madigan spokeswoman Natalie Bauer said.
The full audit is here.
