Center named for former columnist targeted for closure

SPRINGFIELD — One of the facilities targeted by Gov. Pat Quinn for closure — Mabley Developmental Center in Dixon — is named for former Daily Herald columnist Jack Mabley.

Mabley wrote for the paper from 1988 to 2004, and died in 2006 at age 90.

His columns before he came to the suburban paper brought to light terrible conditions at mental health facilities in Illinois at the time, so the Dixon center was named after him.

“Before I became governor, Jack had long championed the cause of our state’s mentally ill and developmentally disabled,” former Gov. James R. Thompson wrote in the foreword of Mabley’s book in 1987. “I thought it only fitting that we name the new building after the person who had been these patients’ friend and unofficial guardian for so long.”

Quinn is looking to lay off nearly 2,000 people and shutter several state facilities to deal with the state’s budget crunch.

Before the Dixon center is closed — a plan that still could be thwarted by lawmakers or legal action — a state panel would hold a hearing near Dixon.

A fight over the budget and Quinn’s proposal looms when lawmakers are scheduled to return to Springfield in late October.