America's Talking - Illinois diversity commission's budget ballooning but results lag

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

(The Center Square) – Despite federal pushback for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Illinois has spent millions of dollars in the past few years for new, high-paying government jobs to increase the amount of state contracts that go to businesses owned by racial minorities, women and people with disabilities, an investigation by The Center Square found. Yet, at least on paper, the relatively new Commission on Equity and Inclusion is farther from its goal than when it began work in 2022. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/illinois/article_05a70ee4-5c31-4ac2-a881-96f4f779be65.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's talking. I'm Art Kane, Investigations that are at the Center Square, and I'm joined by investigative reporter Jared Strong. DEI has been a big issue around the world lately, especially in America, with government spending on it being cracked down by the Trump administration. But Jared found that Illinois is spending quite a bit of money on getting minority contracts for people in this. state, but it's not really apparently doing what's supposed to do, and a lot of people in the government are making a lot of money. Jared, what did you find in the commission in Illinois? Yeah, well, Illinois's had a goal for decades to get government contracts in the hands of businesses owned by racial minorities, women, and people with disabilities. But over the years,

people have griped that this goal was not being met, even though it was on paper. So a few years ago, lawmakers created the Commission on Equity and Inclusion, which some Republicans derives just creating another layer of government to try to solve a problem. And so what that commission entails is seven commissioners. Each of them's paid at least $150,000 a year at this point. They have a staff of about 30 people right now, total authorization for 52. And so they're operating on a budget of about up to $7 million a year. Meantime, while all this money is being spent, the actual, the proximity or how close they are to reaching their goal has slid backward.

Some would say that's because of a better accounting of these contracts that are going out to these businesses. But in the most recent report, the percentage was 4% of government contracts going, or the total money available on these government contracts going to these businesses, whereas in years past, that percentage was upwards of, you know, 20, 30, even higher percent. So let's break this now. First of all, the budget of this agency has basically doubled since it was created. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. They started off with a budget of about $3.3 million. And it was for a partial year, but yes, the number is now $7.3 million.

And as they've been gaining staff, they have had steady increases and how much that money they're actually spending each year. And you have these seven commissioners who you found, unlike other boards, don't even have to work full time for their $150,000. Is that right? Yeah. strangely, there's, they're the exception to the rule, basically. Other commissions or boards where they have members that are paid,

actually even just less than the commissioners that are part of this agency, they are barred from holding another job, like explicitly barred and said that this needs to be your full-time job. With this commission, there is no requirement like that. And so they could hold outside jobs, come there once a month to be at the board meetings, and still earn, what, four, three times the average salary in Illinois? Yeah, that's right. And I have a look back through all of the meeting minutes yet, but the commissioners are not always there in a recent month.

It didn't even have a quorum for one of their meetings. So, yeah, those monthly meetings are allowed for two hours. and they often don't even run that long. So that sounds like a pretty good job. On top of that, there's a bunch of staff that makes a lot of money too, right? Yeah, that's right. The chief of that stuff, the executive director, makes about $150,000, and the average salary is about $100,000 for people who work there.

So they are higher than average. So explain what you meant by the fact that they're not meeting the goals. in fact, because they seem to be blacksliding on the goals, but there is a caveat that they've expanded the pool of the contracts. So what's really happening there? Are they falling down on the job or are they just set the goals higher? Well, the goal is now higher. You know, before it was 20% when they created the commission,

they increased that to 30%. So under the department of the previous department that was over, we're seeing it was central management services. You know, they were hitting numbers in the 20, 30 percent. So it's kind of unclear yet what part of this is better accounting and what part of it might be some sort of backsliding. They've identified a wider breadth of contracts they think should be subject to this goal. So that increased, you know, the pool of money by like three times.

and they have had successes in getting more of these contracts awarded to these businesses, but it has not increased anywhere near that rate. And then I think you mentioned in your story that they're playing games with the percentage now. So instead of saying how much, how many contracts they're awarding, they're saying how close they are to their goal, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, in these annual reports going back, like I said, many, many years, they always said, you know, they always listed the precise percentage of those

eligible contracts or that, that went to these businesses. Well, that number would have dropped in their most recent report to 4%, which is way lower than what they've ever reported before. And so rather than put that number in there, they changed it to show how much of the, how much of a piece of that 30% goal it is. So rather than, say, 4%, they reported 13% it doesn't make it look nearly as bad so it seems I mean it seems like

this agency has been created spent spend seven million dollars a year but does worse than the previous method they had what did the agency say when you tried to talk to them about it nothing I mean they barely responded to my repeated request for interviews to you know to discuss the work that they're doing.

So I don't know. I guess I'll be watching kind of from afar at this point to see what's going on in these meetings going forward. They have the statute that created the commission also created a task force, I guess. You could say that's supposed to aid in this goal too. So we have yet another board, not paid people, but they just met for the first time this week. So we'll see where it goes from here, I guess. Keep digging into that. And when we get more, we'll put you on to America's talking and find out more information about it.

Thanks a lot, Jared. Thanks, Howard.