America's Talking - TCS stories about Illinois' diversity agency prompt call for audit

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

(The Center Square) – Illinois diversity commissioners are paid tens of thousands more than other state boards but aren't required to work full time, allowing them to run a digital media company, freelance as a human resources contractor, teach and consult for universities, direct a play and run a business hosting Dungeons and Dragons games at bars, an investigation by The Center Square found. Lawmakers of both parties expressed concern about what the TCS three-month investigation found – with one state representative calling for an audit of the agency.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_bd52a909-1a01-4e40-b445-3c6545ce06be.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. My name is Arc Kane and I'm managing editor of investigations at the Center Square. I am joined by one of my investigative reporters, Jared Strong, and he has been digging into a little known agency in Illinois that was supposed to increase diversity contracts. And he has found, after over several stories, there are a lot of problems with the agency. And now lawmakers are taking notice of his stories. Jared, um, What happened over the weekend and tell us what is going to happen with this agency? As you alluded to, we've been reporting on the Commission on Equity and Inclusion in Illinois for a few months now. And most of that reporting is focused on their performance, and that is getting local businesses certified as being owned by someone who's racial minority or by women or people who are disabled. It's one of their primary charges and one that they have, from an outside observer's view, somewhat failed at. But we dug deeper to see what these commissioners have been doing on a day-to-day basis. They're highly paid. They make $150,000 a year.

But we found that they meet less frequently than their counterparts elsewhere in government. They meet about once a month, usually for less than an hour. They take no votes of consequence to the public. And then on top of that, most of them have had side jobs, too. Some have been paid quite well doing that, making more than $7,500 in a year when they're also collecting a government check, too. And so you found that most of the commissioners in other agencies have to work full-time or are considered full-time so they can't have outside jobs. but the $150,000 that these guys get could be for an hour a month or so. Yeah, there are other paid boards and commissions, some who make less money than the

equity and inclusion board, where the law specifically says they cannot have outside jobs, they must treat their appointment as full-time work. No such requirement like that for these commissioners. And so they've held jobs such as running a digital media company, being a business coach, freelancing as an HR contractor, teaching at a university. And then one of the commissioners also recently finished directing a play in Chicago and founded a business that pairs quote unquote game masters with groups of people for role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. if I'm sure you're familiar with that game art. But they also, they host events with those games at bars fairly regularly called Drinking of Dragons. It's been a while.

I know there's some megacited dice and some org outfits that might be included in that, but I haven't played in years. So after you got this story together, you started calling lawmakers who are on various committees that oversee this agency. You were, it was good that they responded because you got people on both sides of the aisle interested in looking into what you found. That's right. We had one Democrat, Lashon Ford,

say that, you know, I mean, there should be some sort of at least cursory review of all new commissions and boards like this one. This one's been around since 2022. He wants to know if their pay is justified and if, you know, the rules about having outside jobs, whether that should be different for this commission compared with others. I also talked to a Republican Adam Niemerg who said, you know,

there needs to be an audit of this commission. And I've had other folks, other lawmakers reach out to me with similar concerns. So, you know, they're in session now kind of remains to be seen what's going to happen. One of the first stories you did on this, and I think probably one of the most impactful ones, is that you found that this commission certifies fewer minority businesses than the previous one that it replaced without the high paid staff. That's got to get the attention of lawmakers, because why are you paying more for less? Yeah, this is clearly an important priority for lawmakers to create this commission, to increase the goal. of how much state money goes to these businesses. I mean, you know, the commissioners have a budget of $7 million a year.

I would imagine that lawmakers want to see some sort of results from this. Instead, the number of certified businesses in the commission's tenure peaked at 5,400. It's now, has been going down for about a year and a half, more than that. And now it's down to about 2,800. So that just by default is going to cut off some of that state contract money to these businesses that they want to get it to. And there's a computer system to blame too, right? That's right. It's really the main reason for the precipitous dropped in these certifications.

The commission was trying to streamline its processes and thought it could do so with a new computer system that would help facilitate these certifications. but it does not communicate with the systems that other agencies use, other agencies that they relied on for data related to these certifications. They've been trying for, again, over a year and a half to try to figure out a way around this. They haven't found it. They've recently resorted to just manually calling all of these businesses who have lost their certifications to try to convince them to get certified on this new system too. So it's double the work for them.

So they pay for a new system and the system does worse than the previous system, kind of like their certifications do worse than the previous agency. When you call the commissioners to ask them out their outside jobs and you call the head of the agency who also makes over $150,000, what's their response to your questions? I haven't gotten any response. I mean, I've been trying to get a hold of them for months. and even told them, you know, the major points of our most recent article about their ongoings, and they have just completely refused to respond.

But one of the lawmakers says they want to have the, at least the executive director, maybe some of the commissioners in front of his committee for hearings to answer questions. Maybe that's the time they'll answer your questions, too. It's possible, yeah. There's going to be some, at least one representative from the commission who will appear before state lawmakers as part of their budget process this year. And that might be a time that some of the answers come out. Well, great. Great work.

Great impact. And if you want to read Jared's stories, they are all on the investigative page at the Center Square. This has been America's Talking. Thank you for joining us.