Officials
unify to keep Pontiac Correctional Center open
5/7/2008
Kankakee Daily Journal
Adriana Colindres
SPRINGFIELD --
Pontiac Correctional Center opened in 1871, but it's misleading to
characterize the entire prison as being more than 100 years old, say
critics of an Illinois Department of Corrections proposal to scrap the
facility.
"It's not an antiquated facility," Sen.
Dan Rutherford, R-Chenoa, said Tuesday. "The ground may be 100 years old,
but it's been upscaled and it's contemporary."
Rep. Keith Sommer, R-Morton, said the
prison "has been kept up, refurbished, maintained, money spent on capital
improvements constantly over the years. So I think it really is not
representative of what that facility is to say, 'Oh, it's a hundred-and-X
years old.'"
Rutherford, Sommer, Rep. Shane Cultra, R-Onarga,
other state and local officials called a news conference Tuesday morning
in Pontiac to declare their commitment to keeping open the prison, which
is located in Rutherford's Senate district and in Sommer's House district.
After previously announcing plans to
partially close the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet, the
Department of Corrections said on Monday it has called off those plans and
now wants to close Pontiac. The department also intends to expand
operations at a new prison in the northwest Illinois community of Thomson.
When Corrections officials intended to
shutter part of Stateville, they estimated the savings would be $31
million. Under the new plan to close Pontiac, Corrections officials have
estimated saving $4 million to $5 million.
"It seems rather bizarre that they made
that switch, number one," Sommer said. "And where the figures came from,
no one seems to know. I think it was just kind of pulled out of thin air."
But Sergio Molina, executive assistant to
Corrections Director Roger Walker Jr., said that with the earlier plan,
agency officials intended to close part of Stateville in September, and
they would have waited until June 2009 to open a new portion of Thomson.
That time lag accounted for most of the estimated $31 million savings, he
said.
Otherwise, the savings would be about the
same -- $4 million to $5 million -- regardless of whether the closure hit
Stateville or Pontiac, Molina said. Under the Pontiac closure plan,
Thomson would expand operations during January and February 2009 while
Pontiac winds down.
Rutherford said he is "totally skeptical of the numbers."
"There's no way those are the correct
numbers," he added. "I think there's a lot more to this than the numbers.
I don't believe these numbers they're saying."
Rutherford, Sommer, Cultra and others
believe that any possible prison closures, not just at Pontiac, should be
put on hold.
The Department of Corrections needs a
long-term strategy for its facilities, similar to the Illinois Department
of Transportation's five-year road plan, Rutherford said.
Cultra also endorsed the moratorium,
saying that "everything is over-crowded in our correctional facilities"
and "it doesn't make good sense" to close Pontiac. "We need to take a step
back and look at everything statewide to see the whole issue."
Pontiac Mayor Scott McCoy said a
moratorium is a good idea because "things are happening just too fast."
Local and state officials, along with
union representatives, are "unified with one voice that we're going to
follow this thing through, we're going to take it step by step and day by
day and do everything we can to save the Pontiac Correctional Center,"
McCoy said.
Pontiac, which houses 1,600 prisoners, has
551 employees, a number of whom live in communities across The Daily
Journal circulation area, including Cultra's House district.
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