Privacy Digest

Illinois raids welfare to pay for failed video game violence legislation: "

Recent hearings revealed that the State of Illinois spent $1 million defending unconstitutional video games legislation. The story gets even worse when you learn where the money came from.

[...]

When the State of Illinois was tardy in paying its legal bills after attempting to defend a law that regulated the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games, the Entertainment Software Association wondered about the reasons for the delay. Now they know: the state was scouring department budgets, looking for the $1 million it cost to defend the unconstitutional legislation in court. Yes, you read that right--the State of Illinois spent one meeeellion dollars of taxpayer money on the litigation even as the state budget was starved for cash in other, more pressing areas. And worse yet, they spent it on a bill which, when introduced, was plainly unconstitutional.

The grand total was reported this week in a Quad Cities Online article which revealed that "the governor raided funds throughout state government to pay for the litigation. Some of the areas money was taken from included the public health department, the state's welfare agency and even the economic development department." A state representative who attended recent hearings on the issue said that Gov. Blagojevich's staff simply spread the legal bills around by sticking them to agencies which had funds left in their budgets--even if the agencies had nothing to do with the issue or the litigation.

(Read Original Article - Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.)