Signs proclaiming environmental hazards are posted on a fence as the tent encampment for migrants in constructed in the Brighton Park neighborhood, Nov. 29, 2023. | E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune
By Dan Petrella | Chicago Tribune
Despite assurances from Gov. JB Pritzker that state taxpayers would not end up footing the bill for a migrant tent encampment in Chicago that was never built, the state recently agreed to pay $1.3 million to the project’s contractor.
Pritzker made the highly publicized decision to halt construction of the shelter encampment in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood in December 2023, saying “serious environmental concerns” were still present at the city-selected site. The governor’s decision caused the Brighton Park project to be scrapped, and it signaled an early political rift between the governor and Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was pushing for the shelter to be built as winter arrived and the migrant crisis in the city continued.
Pritzker that month also made public assurances that the project’s state contractor, GardaWorld Federal Services, would absorb the costs of the work that it had already put into constructing the camp.
“The understanding with GardaWorld is that they will do other work with us,” Pritzker told reporters at an unrelated event in December 2023. “And they knew, as they were building this shelter, before the environmental report came in, that it was possible that the environmental report wouldn’t allow the building — the completion, rather — of the shelter. And so they understood that, and they were willing to take that liability on through the state’s contract.”
Officials with Pritzker’s office also said the company had agreed not to charge the state if the land was deemed unsafe.
But a $1.3 million payment to GardaWorld was tucked into the recently approved $55 billion state spending plan being sent to Pritzker’s desk. And Pritzker’s Illinois Department of Human Services, which spearheaded the state’s portion of the migrant response, agreed this April to settle a dispute with GardaWorld over payment for its work at the site, other state records show.
Read more here.
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