SUNSHINE ON SCHOLARSHIPS

In Illinois, the sunshine of open records has put the spotlight on an embarrassing political scholarship fund used by state legislators to send students with political ties to college.

The fund, which is perfectly legal, has for years been the subject of skepticism about who benefited the most. Ideally, the fund would have been used by legislators to help needy students in their districts obtain a college education. But when the Associated Press and the News-Gazette newspaper in Champaign pressed for information, they learned what had been suspected all along: the scholarships were used mostly for political payoffs.

Now the Illinois Legislature has voted by make the names of scholarship recipients public. In all likelihood, this will have the effect of restoring some sense of decency to the scholarship slush fund.

And lest any Missourian is left wondering about similar educational perks available from legislators in Missouri, about the only thing a state senator or representative gets these days for serving in Jefferson City is a personalized license plate with the number of the district on it. And many legislators turn that down.