Illinoisans’ confidence in their state government is the lowest of residents of any state in the nation, and corruption stories from February 2016 don’t help.
In January several instances of corruption, influence peddling and mismanagement across Illinois were brought to light, from the College of DuPage’s expense-account mismanagement, to Chicago’s red-light-camera bribery case.
October saw a former Chicago Public Schools CEO plead guilty to wire fraud and several other instances of criminal charges and civil lawsuits against public officials, as well as crony deals between businesses and government.
The residential-center horror stories demonstrate that corruption in government often hurts the most vulnerable among us. It also shows that exposing those injustices can lead to change.
Illinois students could soon benefit from scholarship money to help them find a tutor, attend ACT or SAT prep sessions, pay tuition, get special education services or assist with other academic needs. That will happen in Illinois only if Gov. J.B. Pritzker lets the state’s schoolchildren benefit from the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program, established...