TCS stories about Illinois’ diversity agency prompt call for audit

By Jared Strong | The Center Square
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – Illinois diversity commissioners are paid tens of thousands more than other state boards but aren’t required to work full time, allowing them to run a digital media company, freelance as a human resources contractor, teach and consult for universities, direct a play and run a business hosting Dungeons and Dragons games at bars, an investigation by The Center Square found.

Lawmakers of both parties expressed concern about what the TCS three-month investigation found – with one state representative calling for an audit of the agency.

The seven Commission on Equity and Inclusion commissioners, who lead Illinois’ diversity efforts, meet less frequently than some of their counterparts elsewhere in state government, take no votes of consequence to the public, and earn substantially more money — each about $150,000 per year, according to records of their activities. The average Illinois state salary is between $54,000 and $80,000 so the commissioners make two to three times as much as the typical worker.

Further, most of the governor-appointed commissioners have also worked other jobs, sometimes earning in excess of what state law requires them to disclose — more than $7,500 in a single year — while they were also being paid by the state.

State Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Chicago Democrat who voted to create the commission, said lawmakers should reevaluate the commissioners’ salaries and requirements for their jobs now that they have been operating for several years. By law, other paid state board members cannot have second jobs.

“We should have some type of parity between commissions,” he told The Center Square. “Why is this one different?”

And the commissioners have overseen decisions that resulted in the cataclysmic loss of state certifications for businesses that are owned by non-white people, women and those with disabilities — a significant problem that has simmered for more than a year. At least one commissioner appeared to be unaware of the extent of the problem until a recent meeting.

“This is a fraud of a commission,” said state Rep. Adam Niemerg, a Dieterich Republican, told The Center Square after learning of the findings of this investigation. “You have people making $150,000 a year. They’re not doing anything. …This is a taxpayer-funded payoff for the woke initiative that doesn’t even do the job of the woke initiative.”

One of the commission’s core functions is to increase the number of those certifications to ensure that more of the state’s contract money is spent with minority-owned businesses. Certified businesses get preference in selection for the contract work and help navigating the contracting process.

During the commission’s tenure, the overall number of certified businesses has plummeted by nearly half, from a high of about 5,400 to about 2,800.

Those numbers have consistently declined for more than a year, after the commission switched to a new computer system that was meant to streamline the certification process. Instead, it has impeded it.

Niemerg said the state’s Legislative Audit Commission needs to review the diversity commission’s work, and that he will personally question representatives from the diversity commission when they report to a House appropriations committee of which he is a member.

The commissioners have not responded to repeated interview requests from The Center Square to discuss their work, including a recent email that explained the main elements of this article. The information in this article was gleaned from public records requests, state reports and data, and by viewing commission meetings and reviewing records of them.

Fewer responsibilities

State lawmakers created the commission in 2022 as part of a renewed push to spend more state money with businesses owned by racial minorities and women. The new goal is 30 percent of the total eligible contract money, which in a recent year totaled more than $33 billion.

The agency is led by seven commissioners who have a staff of more than 30 people. The agency’s annual budget is about $7 million.

The commissioners have considerable education and experience in state contracting, business, and advocacy for racial minorities and people with disabilities, according to their resumes, applications and other biographical information that is publicly available.

But it’s unclear whether the application process was competitive. Only one person applied for the commission other than those who received an appointment from Gov. JB Pritzker. His office did not respond to an interview request.

The person who applied but was not appointed, Alexandria Wilson, was hired as executive director of the commission’s staff. She has a salary of about $155,000 annually, according to state salary data.

That is the same salary as commission Chairperson Nina Harris. The other commissioners have slightly lesser salaries of about $148,000. They have received annual raises.

All of them earn $30,000 more than most of the members of the state Labor Relations Board, which decides hundreds of cases each year for unfair labor practice allegations, union representation and arbitrations, according to a recent annual report.

Until last year, the diversity commissioners earned about $40,000 more than members of the Prisoner Review Board, which in a recent year held more than 23,000 hearings that pertained to the release of prison inmates. Many of the board members, but not all, now have salaries comparable to the diversity commissioners.

The prisoner board “convenes daily/weekly to deliberate and prepare orders which enumerate the conditions that an individual in custody shall abide by while on parole/mandatory supervised release,” an annual report said.

In contrast, the commission meets monthly — often for less than an hour — and the meetings are sometimes canceled. A Center Square review of their individual work calendars showed they often have few other meetings each month that require their participation.

In their regular monthly meetings, commissioners receive prepared reports that are read to them aloud, some commissioners make their own reports about certain projects, and they typically vote three times: To approve the minutes from the previous meeting, to approve the remote participation of one or more commissioners, and to adjourn.

The last time they took official action on something else was in June 2023, when they approved minor revisions to their bylaws, according to their records.

Side jobs

Illinois law forbids members of the labor and prisoner boards from working other jobs for pay.

“Each member shall devote his or her entire time to the duties of the office, and shall hold no other office or position of profit, nor engage in any other business, employment, or vocation,” says the law that governs the labor board.

There is no such requirement for the Commission on Equity and Inclusion.

And most of the commission’s members have engaged in outside work, according to their mandatory annual disclosures and other publicly available information.

Commissioner Bruce Montgomery reported that he earned more than $7,500 in 2023 from Sunshine Enterprises, a not-for-profit organization that seeks “to empower local entrepreneurs in under-resourced communities,” according to its tax filings.

Montgomery is an instructor and coach for the organization, according to Sunshine’s website. He did not report income from the job for 2024, but it’s unclear whether that’s because he earned no money or because it was less than $7,500, which is the state reporting threshold. The commissioners are not required by law to report the specific amount of money they made.

Montgomery’s disclosure for 2025 is not yet available.

He also indicates in publicly available biographies that he is the founder and president of Montgomery and Company, a “digital media, information and communications technology company,” and also hosts a weekly television news show.

Montgomery has not reported income from either of those ventures. State business records show that Montgomery and Company was incorporated by Montgomery and dissolved twice. Its incorporations with the state were active from 1989 to 1991 and from 2019 to 2021.

Commission Chairperson Nina Harris reported more than $7,500 of income in 2023 from the Springfield Urban League, where she worked before her appointment to the commission. She indicated she worked “as needed” as a human resources contractor while she was also a commissioner.

Commissioner Ennedy Rivera, an attorney, reported that she was an instructor in 2023 and 2024 for the University of Illinois, and that she assisted with course development at Dominican University in 2024. Her disclosure for 2025 is not yet available. Rivera’s reports show that she did not earn more than $7,500 in a year from either of those jobs.

Commissioner Richard Costes, a thespian, has not reported income for any other jobs, but a social-media profile says he is a freelance diversity, equity and inclusion and accessibility consultant.

Costes also directed a play in Chicago last fall that was performed four days each week for about five weeks through the Babes with Blades Theatre Company. The runtime was about 135 minutes.

He is also a co-founder of Rough Magic Games, which pairs paid “game masters” with groups to host role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. The business routinely hosts events at taverns titled “Drinking and Dragons.”

None of the commissioners responded to a question from The Center Square about whether they considered their state positions to be full-time employment.

Late to the game

There has been scant ongoing discussion from commissioners about the precipitous drop in business certifications during their monthly meetings. One appeared to be surprised by it during the commission’s meeting in October, even though the decline had begun more than a year earlier.

“Am I reading this right that the total of certified BEP vendors in the portal is now 2,869?” asked Commissioner Van Austin, using an acronym for the Business Enterprise Program diversity designation.

He was alarmed by what he calculated to be a 33-percent reduction in certified businesses, after hearing about it in another non-commission meeting.

In reality the decline was larger and began after the agency switched to a new company to provide the website that facilitates the certifications. The change happened in July 2024 and led to a dramatic reduction in certifications that has somewhat plateaued in recent months.

The problem is that the new computer system cannot automatically download certification data from the systems of other government agencies. That’s important because the commission has historically relied on other agencies’ data for most of its certifications.

Now, businesses that are certified by, for example, the city of Chicago must submit a separate certification request with the state. The commission’s staff has been attempting to contact businesses with lapsed state certifications to instruct them about how to navigate the change and get recertified.

“Have we been trending the last six months in an upward direction on the number of certifications?” Austin asked in the October meeting.

LaTasha Binder, a deputy director for the commission who reports the certification numbers each month, replied that she did not know.

“But we are watching them very closely,” she said. “On a daily basis the numbers are dynamic, in and of itself.”

Binder has an annual salary of about $125,000.