The Chicago Tribune's Eric Zorn reports on the details of Illinois' recently passed $31 billion capital spending bill, in which he found millions of dollars earmarked for religious facilities:
Page 101 earmarks $250,000 for renovations to the Friendship House of Christian Service in Peoria; Page 341 earmarks $150,000 for "facility improvements" at the Salaam Conference Center of Muhammad's Holy Temple of Islam in Chicago; Page 176 earmarks $700,000 for capital improvements at St. Malachy School, presumably the Catholic elementary on the West Side, though the bill doesn't specify which of the Illinois schools named for St. Malachy is to get the money.
And on and on.
…
"Every dollar not spent on tuckpointing is a dollar that can go to buy Bibles," is how Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, put it. Schwartz said his organization is not only concerned with the issue of taxpayer support of religion, but also with the seemingly arbitrary, political way in which "winners and losers among churches are decided with no apparent standards at all."
Zorn is keeping a detailed list here.
