For the Record

By: Pamela A. LewisA group of Illinois Hispanic business leaders have formed a political action committee to push business and economic issues they say are overlooked by government’s emphasis on Latino social problems.

“We are tired of hearing all candidates trying to cater to the Hispanic community who only talk about bilingual education, discrimination and illegal immigration,” said Juan Ochoa, co-chairman and treasurer of the Illinois Business Political Action Committee, which was formed in April in Chicago.

The new PAC will contribute to candidates who support building economically strong communities, Ochoa said. The PAC will be limited solely to providing monetary contributions and will not ally with other Hispanic organizations, he said. The group plans to hold its first fundraiser in mid-August.

The more than 250 Latino business owners who formed the PAC previously raised large sums of money—including $250,000 for the March Illinois primary—but lacked a cohesive strategy, Ochoa said.

Most of the businesses donated to Hispanic candidates at a time when there weren’t many running, said Ochoa, president and chief executive officer of the Mexican American Chamber of Commerce of Illinois. Now, the group will support any candidate sensitive to its economic development issues, regardless of race, ethnicity or party affiliation, he said.

Hispanics are the fastest-growing minority group in the country, according to an October 1998 study by the Chicago-based United States Hispanic Leadership Institute. And while white voter registration is declining nationwide, Latino voters have been increasing for at least 20 years and will continue to do so for the next two decades. Illinois has the fifth-largest Latino voting age population in the nation, the study found.

Small-business owners in low-income neighborhoods are getting the cold shoulder from lenders, according to a Woodstock Institute study released in April. The institute, a Chicago-based research organization, found that businesses in low-income neighborhoods experienced a 2.9 percent gain in loans received compared with 49.6 percent in wealthier neighborhoods. The researchers observed lending patterns in Cook and eight surrounding counties.

On May 31, Arthur and Dianne Laing became the first Chicago family to buy a home under a new program that rewards homeowners living near public transportation.

The Location Efficient Mortgage program was developed by Chicago’s Center for Neighborhood Technology and Fannie Mae, the nation’s largest source of financing for home mortgages. The program calculates the money the family could save using public transportation. Those funds can be used to boost home purchasing power. Participating companies hope the program will enable first-time homeowners to buy in higher-priced areas and increase public transportation ridership.

Test scores at Chicago Public Schools continue to rise. But fewer students’ scores are included in these totals, according to a May report by the independent Consortium on Chicago School Research. The scores for about 74 percent of third- to eighth-graders who took the 1999 Iowa Tests of Basic Skills were included in the evaluations, down from 82.3 percent in 1992. The growing number of bilingual education students who are not counted accounts for much of the decline. Special education students whose scores are not included also have risen. “The changing exclusion rates make it difficult to draw accurate judgments about school improvement and student progress,” the report said.

Nearly 37 percent of Illinois immigrants eligible for citizenship in the next five years do not have the English skills to pass citizenship tests, according to a report from the Fund for Immigrants and Refugees, a philanthropic organization, and the Illinois Department of Human Services. Only 43 percent of Mexicans and 62 percent of Poles who will be eligible possess the required skills, the report said.