Email Friend | Print Article | | Share Share

January 23, 2009

Add one Illinois Governor's Wife to the unemployed rolls

Ethel C. Fenig
Joblessness has increased so much that even Illinois' troubled First Family (D) has been affected.  Add Patti (#%&* expletive deleted those Cubs) Blagojevich to the ranks of the unemployed. 

Buried in the wall to wall coverage of Tuesday's inauguration was the notice that the Chicago Christian Industrial League, a homeless shelter which also provides counseling, dismissed her from her $100,000 a year fund raising job.
 

The Chicago Sun-Times reported Jan. 8 that the charity raises about $1 million a year but needed to increase that to $2 million. Its big hurdle: repaying a $10.8 million loan it obtained from ShoreBank with help from the Illinois Finance Authority — a state agency created by Blagojevich’s husband, the governor — to build the $25 million homeless shelter.

The Sun-Times reported that, in each of Patti Blagojevich’s first three months on the job, the Christian Industrial League brought in $10,000 to $15,000 a month — the same as it did before she started, according to president William Good.

Formerly a real estate agent, Mrs. Blagojevich had only worked a few months at her new job to help the League repay the state which her husband still governs. 

"She did a good job, but the circumstances made it very difficult for her,” a source on the league’s board said.

#%&* Expletive deleted.