* Block Club Chicago…

Activist Will Calloway spent months securing state funding for a violence prevention program in South Shore — but now it’s taking so long to access the money, he’s worried it will come too late for the group to effectively do anything with it.

The Passports for Peace violence prevention program, announced in May, will offer out-of-town trips, job training, mentorship and social media monitoring to people at risk of being victimized by or perpetrating gun violence.

Usually, area legislators are quoted in stories like this one criticizing the state agency or governor and siding with their local groups. Or you’ll see reporters gloss over eye-popping things like in this unrelated story by the BGA’s Illinois Answers Project…

The future of a program aimed at helping formerly incarcerated Chicago residents hangs in the balance after the company that was supposed to pay for it, cryptocurrency giant FTX, has imploded amid accusations of fraud before paying most of its promised $1 million grant. […]

The nonprofit, also known as EAT, got the first installment of the grant — just over $393,000 — to support administrative costs. But, without the second payment — more than $600,000 — the program can’t be launched, according to Richard Wallace, EAT’s co-founder and executive director.

A 40 percent administrative overhead? Whoa. Are you kidding me?

* Anyway, let’s get back to the Block Club Chicago story and our original point…

Rep. Curtis Tarver, who represents the area, shares Calloway’s frustration with the process, as “funds aren’t hitting our communities as quickly as we want them to,” he said.

At the same time, a thorough vetting process is needed when spending state funds, Tarver said. […]

“There is a process” to vetting grant funding, Tarver wrote to Calloway in an email obtained by Block Club. “It seems to be being followed, and I do not want any suggestion otherwise by my email being included.” […]

Tarver’s support of the violence prevention program doesn’t mean the state has to “speed up the process, or do anything outside of what the normal process is,” he said. “I want to let the process play itself out.”

That’s really a model for how legislators should react. The state obviously needs to reexamine its contracting laws, but, if the agency is following the rules and nothing is untoward, then legislators shouldn’t pile on to score cheap news media points.

* On to Part 2. Rep. Tarver also wrote an op-ed this week in the Hyde Park Herald about why he didn’t vote on the SAFE-T Act trailer bill after having voted for the original bill in 2021…

On December 1, 2022 only after ensuring that there were enough votes in the Illinois House of Representatives to pass the latest purported “trailer bill” to the SAFE-T Act, I decided not to vote in favor or against the bill.

OK, right off the bat there’s a contradiction. He’s basically saying he would’ve voted for the bill if it was short. Not to mention that it was other people who were out there making sure the bill had enough votes. Rep. Tarver wasn’t even in the building last Thursday during the roll call.

And then he threw his colleagues under the bus…

To have voted in favor of the bill would have been to support those individuals who profess to care about the rights and needs of Black and Brown Illinoisans but at the first site of political pressure are willing to fold. The rights and needs of Black and Brown Illinoisans cannot only be important when wooing us for votes but then discarding us a few weeks later.

Ouch.

…Adding… From Rep. Tarver…

I did not throw my colleagues under the bus. My statement was more general than about this specific vote. It certainly was not to suggest that every colleague that voted in favor of the bill feigns concern about Black and Brown communities. Some people are genuine - others are not. That transcends the Illinois House of Representatives.