* Illinois Statehouse News outlines the future if Gov. Pat Quinn follows through on his plan to shutter state facilities…
Once Quinn announces what he plans to cut, the State Facilities Closure Act kicks in. He must file an official notice with the Legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, or COGFA, within two days.
If Quinn targets a prison, school, developmental center or a residential center owned by the state Department of Veterans Affairs, the governor also must submit a plan that details how he will close the facility within 30 days.
Once the governor submits this plan, COGFA will hold at least one public hearing and a 30-day “public comment period.”
After the public hearings and public comment time ends, COGFA then votes on the governor’s recommendation.
It’s unclear if that vote would prevent the governor from acting.
“You would hear strong arguments on both sides,” said COGFA’s revenue manager Jim Muschinske.
* Then there’s the problem of prison overcrowding…
Illinois’ 27 prisons hold about 49,000 inmates, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. If Quinn closes one of the state’s smaller facilities, each of which hold about 1,200 inmates, those prisoners would have to be housed in other facilities.
Prisons in the state initially were were built to hold 33,373 inmates. Corrections officials, however, switched how they determine that number by counting the number of beds a prison can hold instead of the number of cells. By doing so, the corrections officials could show that the facilities were technically not overcrowded.
Inmates have 34 square feet of living space, or slightly more space that one finds in a typical bathroom, according to the state Department of Corrections. Closing a prison could cause that square footage to get even smaller by putting more prisoners in crowded facilities.
John Maki, executive director of the John Howard Association of Illinois, a prison watchdog group, has toured many of the prisons in the state.
“I don’t see how you close a facility without severely overcrowding the system,” Maki said. “They can keep on putting beds in there, and if that’s their yardstick, they have some more room to go. But in terms of what these prisons were designed to hold, they’re way beyond that.”
* None of these closures will happen overnight. And some of the layoffs might be prevented…
Logistically, any move to close state facilities could easily take a year or longer because the General Assembly strengthened its oversight role after former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s thwarted attempts to close prisons in Vandalia and Pontiac.
AFSCME also has had success in blocking mass layoffs through the courts. The union convinced a Downstate judge to throw out Quinn’s efforts to lay off 2,600 state workers in 2009.
And…
Quinn’s office must give workers at least 30 days notice of pending layoffs.
- Coach - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 1:36 pm:
=== It’s unclear if that vote would prevent the governor from acting. ===
Why isn’t it clear? COGFA’s vote on facility closure is either binding or not binding, so which is it?
- Leatherneck - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 1:42 pm:
Will these cuts be primarily in those agencies where Quinn cancelled raises for union workers in July due to those offices being underfunded for the year (e.g. Revenue, Historic Preservation, Labor, in addition to Corrections and DHS)? Or could all state agencies, even those viewed as fully-funded for the rest of the fiscal year, be fair game for these cuts too?
Could Quinn also force the constitutional officers (SOS, AG, Treasurer, etc.) to cut their remaining FY12 budgets over 2 months into the fiscal year too–even though none of their line items were vetoed on June 30? Or are these latest cut attempts just for agencies under the Governor’s jurisdiction?
- Cincinnatus - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 1:44 pm:
Coach,
In this state, there are no rules…
- Anon - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 1:45 pm:
It’s only an advisory opinion, though it does slow down the process, which often leads to blocking the move.
- Downstate weed chewing hick - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 1:51 pm:
Did Blago go through any of those steps when he closed the state parks and historic sites? Or did the rules not apply to those types of facilities. Or, of course, there is always the possiblity that the rules just didn’t apply to Blago.
- Dirt Digger - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 1:52 pm:
Is there a word for an oxymoron in the form of a question?
- Cincinnatus - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 1:58 pm:
DD,
Quinn’s half way to an oxymoron…
- wordslinger - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 2:19 pm:
Painful cuts were implicit in the tax increase vote. If they were easy, they would have been done by now.
- State Worker - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 3:27 pm:
There is no way Democratic AFSCME and Republican legislators will ever let anyone shut a prison down. That is the biggest jobs program in the state. Even Forby who has several prisons is whining that they always want to shut down a prison in Southern Illinois.
Well that’s because we built too damn many of them and taxpayers have to pay for them. New York is rational enough to shut them down, and we should too. But, we won’t.
- steve schnorf - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 7:33 pm:
I don’t think we have “too many” prisons. They are way over the capacity they were intended for. What we don’t have is enough revenue to keep doing what we’re doing, regardless of whether we are doing it right or wrong.
- In the Sticks - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 9:39 pm:
Currently there are historic Sites that are not closed, but they do not have any staff. If there are buildings, there are no hours of operation, but the grounds are available. So - no sites have been closed, but they really are not open.
- Gregor - Wednesday, Sep 7, 11 @ 10:07 pm:
I agree with Mr. Schnorf. The prisons are a powderkeg of over-crowding, the staff is woefully short to maintain control, much less safety. And the next step will be hot-bunking inmates and putting half of them on a night shift while their buddy uses the bed. Great for increased disease risk and risk of rioting and such. But they don’t vote, and nobody outside can see them in there, so bleep ‘em. Cutting parole and re-integration programs and alternatives to sentencing for petty drug addictions all add more pressure to the system, the opposite of the intended goal. And it will create more long-term costs than the cuts save. This is typical of how the state’s problems have been dealt with in microcosm: you hide the problem under a rug without actually dealing with it, you re-write the rules you broke so you can maintain a pretense of compliance, and you hope nobody calls you on any of it until the *next* administration comes in, long as your guy doesn’t wear the jacket for any of it for his term, it’s all good. … Just once it would be nice to see electeds that were more interested in DOING their job, than in KEEPING it.