[Mr Downtown]

The Illinois Constitution (and the First Amendment to the US Constitution) forbids any government money going to religious organizations. That's what made Blagojevich's day-of-fire promise to rebuild Pilgrim Baptist laughable. Now if the church has set up a separate not-for-profit development corporation to develop badly needed new strip malls to serve the people of Hamilton Park, well that's different. But supposedly someone will be looking to make sure no money crosses over to the church itself.