Illinois awards $31.5 million in grants funded by marijuana revenue
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[January 22, 2021]
By PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois
phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – The state announced Thursday
that it has awarded $31.5 million in grants to 81 community
organizations around Illinois to help fund legal services for low-income
residents, youth development, violence prevention and economic
development in areas hardest hit by the war on drugs.
The Restore, Reinvest and Renew, or “R3” grants are funded with a
portion of the state’s revenue from sales of adult-use marijuana, and
they were a key element of the 2019 bill that legalized recreational
marijuana in Illinois.
“We know that too many communities, disproportionately Black and brown
communities throughout our state, have suffered from over incarceration
and decades of disinvestment due to the failed war on drugs,” Lt. Gov.
Juliana Stratton, who chairs the R3 Program Board, said during an
interview with Capitol News Illinois. “And so the R3 program was one
component that was included by the members of the General Assembly, with
the leadership of the Legislative Black Caucus, in particular, to make
sure that we focused on restorative justice.”
The Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act went into effect on Jan. 1, 2020.
Under that law, the state levies an excise tax of 10 percent of the
purchase price of marijuana with a THC content of 35 percent or less.
Marijuana with THC levels higher than that is taxed at 25 percent of the
purchase price while cannabis-infused products are taxed at 10 percent.
The law also provides that 25 percent of that revenue be used to fund
grants in communities that have suffered from economic disinvestment,
violence, and the severe and disproportionate damage caused by the war
on drugs, which are largely low-income communities of color.
Officials said the grants announced Thursday were funded with revenues
from the first month of legalized sales through the present. The
deadline for submitting applications for the first round of grants was
in July. Applications were submitted through the Illinois Criminal
Justice Information Authority, which was also responsible for
identifying communities that were eligible.
Many of those grants will help fund free legal services for low-income
residents involved in civil cases, including debt collection. A report
published in the Illinois Bar Journal found that as many as two-thirds
of all civil cases filed in Illinois outside of Chicago in 2015 involved
at least one litigant who did not have an attorney.
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Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton attends an event promoting
the U.S. Census last year. (Credit: Blueroomstream.com)
Prairie State Legal Services, which provides services in northern
and parts of central Illinois, was awarded four grants totaling just
over $1 million to provide civil legal aid, while Land of Lincoln
Legal Services, which operates in central and southern Illinois, was
awarded three grants totaling just over $230,000.
Several of the grants also went to agencies that provide re-entry
services for state prison inmates being released back into the
community. Among those was a $228,702 grant to Lutheran Social
Services in Marion.
The largest single grant announced Thursday, $2.5 million, was
awarded to the Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative to
provide a combination of youth development, economic development and
violence prevention services on Chicago’s mid-south side.
A number of cities also received grants for similar programs,
including the cities of Harrisburg, Kankakee, Madison, Rockford and
Springfield.
“What I'm really proud of is not just the fact that these funds are
getting to communities, but I'm proud of the way that it's getting
to communities, and that’s centered on equity,” Stratton said. “We
made sure that we had town halls and meetings throughout the
communities that were attended by hundreds of organizations and
hundreds of people to make sure that we were doing outreach,
especially for some of the smaller organizations that that might not
often have had an opportunity to get these grant funds.”
Stratton said the R3 board hasn’t set a timeline for distributing
the second round of grants.
“We are very excited to get this first round of grants off the
ground,” she said.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan
news service covering state government and distributed to more than
400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois
Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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