Waste watch: Illinois spends $2.6M on tennis, pickleball

Illinois’ broken budgeting process allowed state lawmakers to spend $2.6 million on tennis and pickleball courts.

Illinois state lawmakers are handing $2.6 million in grants to local governments and nonprofits to develop and run tennis and pickleball courts.

The winners include:

• $2 million to XS Tennis in Chicago for operational expenses.
• $200,000 to Winthrop Harbor for playground and pickleball court improvements.
• $180,000 to Peoria Public School District 150 for tennis court maintenance.
• $120,000 to Skokie Park District to replace tennis and pickleball courts at Gleiss Park.
• $100,000 to Chicago Prairie Tennis Club for court improvements.

Two of these racquet-related grants fund private entities whose operations generate private revenue.

XS Tennis has generated significant revenue during the past few years through donations and grants. In 2023, XS reported revenue of $2.7 million. In 2024, they reported revenue of $22.7 million, including $10.8 million from contributions and grants.

They only reported $3.5 million in expenses, leaving them with $21.1 million in assets. It is not clear why they need an additional $2 million from Illinois taxpayers, especially with such a large jump in revenue. XS has not publicly specified how it will spend the $2 million grant from the state.

While the Chicago Prairie Tennis Club doesn’t bring in much revenue, it receives contributions from private donors such as the United States Tennis Association. Why it needs taxpayer dollars to help fund its tennis court renovations is unclear.

Courts in Winthrop Harbor, Peoria and Skokie also received funding. Again, there may be reasons why state taxpayers should help, but those reasons are clouded by the fast and easy way state lawmakers put these earmarks in the state budget at the last minute.

Earmarks such as these are problematic because the process for proposing and securing them lacks transparency. Taxpayers do not know why these appropriations are made, why these projects are more worthy than others and do not know how the funds will be spent.

The state should instead use competitive grants with objective evaluation criteria and reporting requirements that are scored and tracked by a state agency. That would ensure the funds are allocated and used properly.

Lawmakers claimed the 2026 budget contained no pork, but a closer look shows 2,815 items over $200,000 lawmakers decided to fund in the final hours of the legislative session – rushed, harmful to taxpayers and with no time for public scrutiny.

Those include $40 million for a sports complex at the alma mater of Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch.

Taxpayers deserve a more transparent state budget process to hold legislators accountable for wasteful spending. This means setting a spending cap, banning “gut-and-replace” tactics, allowing at least 72 hours for public review of the budget in its final form to comply with the state’s constitutional rule, and requiring lawmakers to publicly disclose and justify all earmarked spending requests.

Want to see other earmarks in this year’s budget? Use our look-up tool below.