Chicago State University’s president said Thursday that she will keep a student outreach center open through January while awaiting promised funding from Springfield.
President Elnora Daniel had threatened this week to close the center because the university had not received $300,000 promised by Gov. Rod Blagojevich at the end of last spring’s budget session.
The funding agreement was negotiated by state Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago), whose boyfriend is the director of the Student Financial Assistance Outreach Center. The funding promised for the center was just one of the pork-barrel deals agreed to by Blagojevich in exchange for Democrats approving his budget.
Davis asked the university’s board to continue to pay the center’s employees until the end of January. She has dated the center’s director, Arnold Jordan, for many years. “This gives us an opportunity to get the money that the governor … said we would get,” said Davis.
According to the agreement, Chicago State would spend $300,000 on the center this fiscal year, and the state agreed to reimburse the university by the fall of 2006. Daniel said she signed the plan believing the university would have been reimbursed by now.
“We hope that our continued support would encourage the state to be forthcoming at this time rather than to wait until the end of the budget cycle,” Daniel said.
The center helps high school and college students navigate the financial aid system.
The university’s board also voted to look into whether the center “is producing the results that it has been established to produce,” Daniel said.
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jscohen@tribune.com
