The Neighborhood Recovery Initiative is on the griddle before state lawmakers Wednesday. This is the anti-violence program that the governor put together in 2010 that the state auditor criticized as poorly run, and which Republicans say was a political slush fund for the governor.
But Barbara Shaw, who ran NRI as head of the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority, says it was mostly successful.

“People say we have to get to the bottom of the NRI program. I say we have to get to the middle and the top, and look at the excellent work that was done,” she testified before the Legislative Audit Commission, a panel of state lawmakers, today in Chicago.

Shaw retired in 2012. She acknowledged that there were shortcomings.

“There is no question that not all the ideas worked equally well in all communities, or that all agencies were as successful as most,” she said. She said NRI was “a serious program” that was largely successful in quelling violence in stricken communities.

The U.S. attorney in Springfield gave the go-ahead for Wednesday’s hearing, telling lawmakers that he no longer needed these witnesses. He had previously asked for a 90-day delay because he is conducting a criminal investigation.