Records: Thornton Township Spent $46,000 on Trip to South Carolina Church
ICPR Executive Director Sarah Brune is quoted in this article
via Chicago Tribune
“Thornton Township spent $46,000 on a September fact-finding trip to South Carolina, where officials campaigned for a southern church to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and spoke to community members about peace in the wake of a church shooting there, records and interviews show.
The $46,120 expense includes hotel lodging for 15 south suburban delegates, air travel, bus service and restaurant outings, records released by the township show. Taxpayers also picked up the tab for alcohol at dinner, including wine and whiskey, and paid honorariums to three reverends, records show.
Supervisor Frank Zuccarelli said the four-day trip’s ‘main purpose’ was to ‘get knowledge from the people directly in Charleston as to why their reaction was so much different than the reactions in Ferguson and Baltimore and Cleveland,’ a reference to police-involved killings of young African Americans in those cities that generated nationwide outrage and violent protests.”
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