DCEO Blasted for Improperly Implementing Pandemic Business Grants
The Governor’s office at the Statehouse in Springfield.
A new report from the Illinois Auditor General shows Governor JB Pritzker’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) failed in oversight of hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic grants for small businesses.
The report, issued by Auditor General Frank Mautino, says DCEO didn’t keep track of $580 million in federal pandemic dollars released to businesses around the state.
“DCEO could not provide documentation to show how or why it selected organizations to administer Round 1 of the BIG program,” the report states. “One of the grant administrators, as well as a DCEO official, appears to have not complied with conflict of interest policies at DCEO.”
The report showed DCEO didn’t verify if businesses complied with the law and other necessary certifications and provided grants to over 600 businesses that didn’t qualify for the funding.
The report also founded the state started giving out money before it had rules in place to do so, and gave some businesses preferential treatment in the rewarding of grants.
The report also showed DCEO lacked oversight.
“DCEO oversight of the award selection process for the small business component of BIG was insufficient,” the report reads. “Our testing of the selection process found significant deficiencies in both rounds.”
Furthermore, the state did not seek to get money back when it was determined businesses had lied or didn’t qualify for funding.
We asked a former Republican legislator about the report Monday night and they criticized the Pritzker administration.
“Everyone was flying by the seat of their pants in the early days of the pandemic, but most of these grants went out in 2021, a year into the pandemic,” the former legislator said. “This is another failure of the Pritzker administration and shows just how unprepared and unqualified they were trying to navigate the pandemic.”
A DCEO spokesperson provided a statement to The Illinoize last night.
“In mid-2020 during the height of the pandemic, DCEO delivered grants to thousands of businesses in dire need of support – to offset the impact of closures, and to help them survive the global economic upheaval occurring at the time. With many small businesses on the brink of financial collapse, DCEO’s highest priority was to support Illinois’ businesses as efficiently as possible. A traditional grant program can take more than a year from conception to grants going out the door. BIG was launched 3 weeks after legislation became law and thousands of small businesses and jobs were saved as a result. After developing a first-of-its kind program during an unprecedented global economic crisis, the agency learned valuable insights and has since vastly improved processes through additional large-scale funding programs for Illinois businesses through its B2B program.”