Trib’s Capitolist Attitude

“The network might well be a better fit for the Gingrich model of local funding and control of programs in which the federal government now plays a role.”

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In a very narrow sense Locin was right about federal aid. Nobel doesn’t receive a penny of it earmarked specifically for the Safe Schools Network. But far from fitting a “local funding” model, Nobel receives half a million unearmarked dollars a year from Washington, plus $800,000 from Springfield. “There’s no way we can function without it,” Ortiz told me.

What’s more, she wrote, federal AmeriCorps dollars were now being used “to renovate 3 former crack houses across the street from our school”–this being a project launched by Nobel. “Once the scenes of murders and rapes, these 3 buildings will soon provide affordable housing.

Instead of asking Ortiz whether the Safe Schools Network received federal funds, Locin asked a spokesman for the Bank of America, which spends about $400,000 a year underwriting educational programs for the 13 Orr schools. Uncertain, the bank spokesman, Kevin Anderson, checked with Freddie Calixto, head of Broader Urban Involvement Leadership and Development (BUILD), which receives federal funds to train volunteer parents in safety procedures. Then Anderson told Locin apparently not.

The deal–which allowed the company and its African-American partners to purchase two southern TV stations while taking advantage of a minority tax preference being eliminated everywhere else–was twice noted in the Tribune of April 4. A short, unsigned article in the business pages emphasized the $63 million tax break coming to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which was selling one of the stations the Tribune Company intended to buy. And there was a brief mention at the end of a section-one Reuters article headlined “Health deduction for self-employed OKd.”

“If I had three people to focus just on Illinois I might have focused on Carol Braun’s day with the tax bill,” reflected Warren, whose staff is about five times the size of Sweet’s.