Thirty years ago, Bruce Rauner and Carl Thoma were two of four partners in the private equity firm GTCR, which Thoma had cofounded in 1980. They were pioneers in venture capital and leveraged business buyouts, and profited mightily before the partnership broke up in 1998.
The Foundation, with assets of $156 million, also provides financial support for research, publication, exhibitions, and educational programs in its areas of interest, and lends works from its collection to other institutions.
Some are small, and they’re sometimes housed on the private grounds of their founders; others, like the Broad in Los Angeles or the nearly-in-Chicago Lucas Museum, are huge. The smaller institutions attracted the attention of the Senate Finance Committee a few years ago; there was concern that they might not be offering enough pubic access to qualify for tax exemption, which is, in effect, a taxpayer- funded subsidy. But, as tax law expert Steven Rosenthal of the D.C.-based Tax Policy Center confirmed in a phone interview last week, nothing substantial has been done, even by Trump’s 2017 tax law, to curtail their advantages.
Compared to battling even deeper pockets in the down-and-dirty world of Illinois politics?
