The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency will not apply for a federal grant to help fund the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project that is digitizing every document ever read or written by the Great Emancipator.
After deadline for an Illinois Times story printed today that highlights the project’s financial uncertainty, IHPA spokesman Chris Wills yesterday afternoon confirmed that the state will not apply for the grant from a division of the national archives that had been expected to provide $100,000 or so in funding. The deadline for grant applications is today. IHPA has blamed the state’s budget impasse for the decision to not apply for federal funding.
Today, Wills also released a memo from Daniel Stowell, the project’s director, outlining the project’s uncertain future. Stowell in the September memo to members of an advisory board that oversees the papers project wrote that IHPA director Amy Martin has frozen all accounts related to the project and that the office of the executive inspector general will perform an investigation.
The purpose of the inspector general’s investigation isn’t made clear in the memo, but Stowell paints a bleak picture of the project’s future.
“There never has been and is not now any intention to hide any expenditure,” Stowell wrote. “I welcome an Office of the Executive Inspector General examination of our expenditures, but as that process takes place, all of my colleagues will lose their jobs.”
Stowell also wrote that he has been ordered not to travel, work any overtime hours, have any contact with the media. He also wrote that his access to the project’s funding accounts has been cut off and that he has been ordered not to apply for any grants.
The IHPA disclosed the memo after Illinois Times filed a request under the state Freedom of Information Act. The memo was not included in an initial response to the paper’s records request but it was mentioned in an email that showed the memo had been distributed outside the agency as an attachment. The memo was turned over after Illinois Times on Monday sent a follow-up request to the agency.
Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2015.
