6-25-18-ERNIE ALLEN’S-TOP STORY-
The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago will benefit from almost $200 million in taxpayer funding for work on infrastructure projects near the center on Chicago’s South Side, per msn.com.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former Obama White House chief of staff, described the infrastructure improvements as “money well spent.”
“Bringing the Obama Presidential Center to Chicago took leadership and vision, and we are gratified that our partners in Springfield also saw the potential for what this means for all of Illinois,” Emanuel said in a statement Friday.
The funding would go toward meeting “the transportation infrastructure needs related to the Obama Center, from road construction to traffic mitigation to pedestrian safety to parkland enhancement.”
“The state’s $174 million investment in infrastructure improvements near the Obama Center on the South Side of Chicago is money well spent,” he said.
The Washington Examiner reports that Illinois taxpayers will also shoulder half of a $50 million project to overhaul an above-ground rail stop two miles from the center. The other half will be funded via a Transportation Department grant.
The Center has also faced a lawsuit by Protect Our Parks, which alleged that the city was engaging in a “short con shell game” to get the 12-story museum and library built on parkland.
“Defendants have chosen to deal with it in a classic Chicago political way, known as a short con shell game, a corrupt scheme to deceive and seemingly legitimize an illegal land grab, one that will endure for centuries to come, regardless of future changing public park needs and increasingly consequential environmental conditions,” the lawsuit said
EURweb.com 
