Despite Violence 'Public Health Crisis,' Pritzker Breaks $50M Promise?

CHICAGO — Violence is a public health crisis. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that.

He also signed into law a promise to spend $50 million this fiscal year to help reduce the near record-high shootings and murders that plague our state.

The anti-violence funding pledge turned out like Pritzker's promise that the legal cannabis industry he forged during his first term would produce new Black millionaires.

It vanished like legal weed smoke.

MORE ON PATCH: Pritzker's Cannabis Pledge Was Another Vow That Went Up In Smoke

On Wednesday, WBEZ's Patrick Smith reported that with the fiscal year nearly over, Pritzker's administration has spent just one-tenth of 1 percent of that pledged federal cash — a grand total of $56,764.

When confronted with that excellent bit of investigated reporting, Pritzker's administration said it is "developing plans to ensure the money is spent effectively," according to WBEZ.

Meanwhile, grassroots anti-violence groups have gone without the "significant increases in funding" Pritzker promised in news releases and public appearances.

And 838 people have been shot — 179 of them fatally — in Chicago since New Year's Day.

Read (or listen to) Smith's story. Pritzker's deputy governor says the delay to send cash to neglected neighborhoods plagued by violence has been intentional.

Rather than respond to violence with the urgency of a public health crisis, Deputy Gov. Sol Flores said the governor's administration has been setting up ways to evaluate whether the "huge investment in cash" makes a difference in saving lives.

“We’ve been … thinking through a whole of government approach to anti-violence, along with a significant amount of resources that we’re investing,” Flores said.

I'm not sure how the scourge of street violence caught the Pritzker administration so unprepared.

It just didn't pop up like a pandemic during an election year.

Are we to believe that Gov. Pritzker announced $50 million in anti-violence spending — shortly after his fellow-billionaire nemesis, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, criticized him for not doing enough to help fight Chicago's shooting problem — for programs that he's not sure work?

Just to get a positive headline?

That does sound like something Pritzker might do.

MORE ON PATCH: Pritzker Violence Executive Order Smells Like A Campaign Promise

Or is the slow rollout of federal cash really just a matter of calculating a return on the $50 million investment?

I can't decide whether it's foolish or callous for a Pritzker administration official to tell a reporter it's important to know how many lives might be saved by this particular $50 million before responding to a public health crisis that hits poor minority communities the hardest.

Both, probably.

There's an argument to be made that investing taxpayer funds in violence interruption programs isn't an effective tool to stem shootings.

But the governor didn't share those concerns with the public.

Pritzker promised $50 million in immediate funding for violence prevention programs.

And he hasn't delivered.

Maybe the governor will make that a priority now that the public radio station his sister's family foundation helps prop up broke the news.

Pritzker should probably decide soon.

Election Day comes shortly after summer, the shooting season.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots.

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