Commission gets an earful on prison closure plan

PONTIAC, _ By Thursday morning, a commission considering Gov. Rod Blagojevich's plan to close a central Illinois prison will have a mound of new information to weigh -- the opinions of a number of people who would be directly affected.

More than 1,000 people attended the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability's hearing on the governor's plan to close the maximum-security Pontiac Correctional Center.

The people packed the Pontiac Township High School auditorium, a commons area outside and the nearby gym. They heard state Department of Corrections Director Roger Walker insist that closing the prison makes economic sense, and they heard what they already knew -- that Pontiac will pay a heavy price.

The governor wants to close the prison and move 800 of its roughly 1,650 inmates to a new, largely unused prison in Thomson, in northwestern Illinois. The others would be scattered around the state.

Walker says the move would save about $8.5 million in 2009 and 2010 as the state struggles with a budget deficit of roughly $700 million.

"The department has made a concerted effort the past few years to open Thomson," Walker told the commission, which is made up of a dozen members of the General Assembly. "The best available option for the department at this time is to close Pontiac."

But the town, which has about 12,000 people and sits 40 miles northeast of Bloomington, would lose about 570 jobs at the prison. The facility, which has been here more than 130 years, is the second-largest local employer.

Mayor Scott McCoy told the commission he expects most of those people and their families to move, since many are career prison-system workers with pensions and benefits tied to those jobs. Those moves would rob Pontiac of many of its professionals, he said.

"Many of the spouses of those employees are our nurses, doctors, teachers and so on," he said.

McCoy also said the plan to close the prison has already rippled on a small scale through the town, with people putting off plans to remodel homes or buy new ones.

One of the people who planned to speak late Wednesday night, Stephanie DeLong, said beforehand that the governor isn't considering the people who hold those 570 jobs.

DeLong's husband, Kevin, is a correctional officer at the prison, and she owns a restaurant in town that she doubts would survive the loss of the facility.

"(Blagojevich) refused to move his family to Springfield because he didn't want to interrupt his daughter's lifestyle. I'm thinking, I've got five kids and they don't want to interrupt their lifestyles."

Blagojevich has been heavily criticized in downstate Illinois for his insistence that he live in Chicago rather than the state capital.

The commission can't block the governor's plan. Its recommendation, which could come at any time between this week and late September, is purely advisory.

But Walker and his assistants nonetheless faced a battery of questions from commission members.

Sen. Christine Radogno, a Lemont Republican, noted that she and others heard in great detail during a tour earlier this year about the problems at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet.

Blagojevich initially planned to close Stateville, abruptly targeting Pontiac instead.

Sergio Molina, executive assistant to the Corrections director, didn't directly address the reason for the change of course, but told Radogno the state could only afford to have one maximum security prison, and Thomson was a better choice than Pontiac.

"We can't believe a word that comes out of your mouth," Radogno told Molina.

Many in Pontiac see politics rather than economics behind the switch.

It came after Joliet Democratic Sen. A.J. Wilhelmi voted only "present" on a move to put a recall initiative aimed at Blagojevich on the November ballot. GOP lawmakers that represent Pontiac supported it.

And Blagojevich suggested earlier this month that the prison might be saved if the legislature passed his long-sought capital-spending plan that also includes roads, bridges and schools.

"Lets face it, the governor changed his mind a few days after the (recall vote)," Sen. Bill Brady, a commission member and Republican from Bloomington, said outside the hearing. "To me it clearly smacks of quid pro quo."

Blagojevich spokesman Brian Williamsen, who was not at the meeting, insisted the governor has no ulterior motive.

"Certainly closing the prison is not something he wants to do," Williamsen said in a telephone interview. "At the same time, though, the funding needs to be available."

Brady also doubts the Department of Corrections has the authority to use money now set aside for the Pontiac prison to operate the Thomson prison, as Walker said.

Pontiac officials might have grounds for a lawsuit to block Blagojevich's plan, following the lead of three state legislators and Springfield city officials who have sued the governor to stop a similar plan to move 140 Department of Transportation jobs out of the capital, Brady said.