*** UPDATE *** This won’t help the governor’s argument. The state’s prison population just hit an all-time high…
State records analyzed by The Associated Press show the population topped 49,154 over the weekend. That’s 19 inmates more than the Corrections Department’s previous record, set on Oct. 6, 2011. […]
The prisons were designed to hold 33,700 people. Last spring corrections officials declared a downward trend in prison numbers and predicted an overall average for the year of less than 46,000.
Quinn wants to close five correctional centers — a loss of 1,700 more beds — to save money in a budget crisis. A lawsuit by a state employees’ union has stalled that.
[ *** End Of Update *** ]
* Rahm Emanuel isn’t the only executive who’s been rebuked by the courts in the past few days. Gov. Pat Quinn took it on the chin Friday…
The Illinois Fifth District Appellate Court in Mount Vernon has denied the state’s appeal of a 30-day restraining order issued earlier this month in Alexander County.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees had sought the restraining order to temporarily halt closures of state facilities, including Tamms Correctional Center, Illinois Youth Center in Murphysboro and Southern Illinois Adult Transition Center in Carbondale.
An arbitrator had ruled in the union’s behalf, ordering the state and AFSCME to return to the bargaining table for 30 days before closures could begin. The union filed suit in Alexander County to effectively give that decision the weight of law.
Associate Circuit Judge Charles Cavaness of the First Judicial Circuit granted the 30-day restraining order Sept. 4. The state appealed Sept. 6.
* From AFSCME’s website…
The Appellate Court unanimously rejected the Quinn Administration’s appeal of the TRO, issued earlier this month, and dismissed the claim that Alexander County Circuit Court Judge Charles Cavaness had abused the court’s discretion in issuing the order in response to a motion filed by AFSCME. The ruling clearly stated that the “trial court did not abuse its discretion in granting the temporary restraining order to maintain the status quo until the court rules upon the request for injunctive relief.”. The TRO is affirmed and remains in effect.
At the same time, the Quinn Administration has also filed suit in Cook County seeking to vacate the arbitrator’s order on which the TRO is based. In response to two grievances filed by AFSCME Council 31 earlier this month, Arbitrator Steve Beirig ruled that the Administration had not fulfilled its contractual obligation to bargain over the impact of the scheduled closures in DOC and DJJ. The arbitrator directed the parties to continue negotiations for up to 30 days to resolve the outstanding issues—especially those related to the impact of the closures on employee health and safety throughout the corrections system.
The Administration has also filed a motion in Cook County seeking an emergency stay of the arbitrator’s order. If the stay is granted, then the state would not be obligated to bargain and could go forward with the closures while the State’s motion to vacate the arbitrator’s ruling is pending before the court.
AFSCME has filed counter motions to dismiss the state’s motion to vacate (and with it the motion for the emergency stay) or else to move the case to Alexander County Circuit Court to be considered in conjunction with the Union’s pending case seeking an injunction to halt the closures.
Both the Administration’s motions and the Union’s motions will have an initial hearing in Cook County Circuit Court at 10:30 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 19.
The union is seeking the injunction “in aid of arbitration” to prevent the state from moving forward with the closures until the issues raised in impact bargaining have been addressed. If the injunction is granted, it will likely be on the same basis as the TRO. A TRO can be granted without the full-scale legal proceedings that are required for an injunction—and is granted on an emergency basis until the hearing on the injunction can be completed.
A hearing on the Union’s motion seeking an injunction to halt the closures in aid of arbitration is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 24 in Alexander County Circuit Court.
Discuss.
- steve schnorf - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 12:47 pm:
ah, the tangled web we weave, even when there is no intent to deceive
- Chamber Type - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 1:19 pm:
Could you imagine if the courts could deny corporations the ability to close plants or transfer operations?
- bartelby - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 1:23 pm:
On its face, the safety claims by AFSCME are completely without merit. There is no evidence anywhere that supermax prisons decrease prison system violence. And the constitutional issue seems to me clear too: the executive branch runs the prisons, and should have the right to transfer prisoners or close unneeded prisons, so long as they are following the law. Is this then just a matter of a downstate judge placating his constituency, and other judges not wishing to intervene during these procedural arguments?
- Dan Bureaucrat - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 1:24 pm:
AFSCME can pride themselves on successfully delaying all prison closures, but it is not for the public good.
Every single prison worker has already been given a job assignment in a regular prison, so this delay is just drains the state budget.
They are even holding up the closure of empty prisons! Murphysboro has zero inmates. Tamms supermax has 150 prisoners in the supermax and some 100-150 in the boot camp, and yet they have 302 employees. It is ridiculous.
The governor’s office estimates that this will cost taxpayers 1.2 million per week. This money is coming from the already skeletal IDOC budget. It was already skeletal and they had to cut 112 million more from it this year.
It’s too easy to criticize the IDOC and the governor for prison problems. They have been given an impossible situation and I admire them for standing up to AFSCME and sticking to these closures.
- Captain Illini - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 1:39 pm:
Once again, the issue is the agreement that was violated, and again, PQ asked that it be set aside because he didn’t want to honor it. Let’s see…we’ve got one lawsuit in the hopper and a few more to get through before PQ’s scorecard can be filled out, but since all of them seem to be predicated on not wanting to follow agreements, or contract law, he may be answering his own question of their outcome…
- Fed up - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 2:17 pm:
Curios the prison population is currently just over 49,000 and the systems capacity is 33,700. I ain’t no math wizard but how does closing prisons seem at all logical. I am starting to believe AFSCME that this could be about safety. We are already overcrowded and closing prisons just leads to even more severe overcrowding.
- Demoralized - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 2:25 pm:
I’ve had it with AFSCME. I know where I work we must get “permission” from AFSCME for anything we want to do. AFSCME should NOT have unilateral veto power over the state’s ability to manage. This contract battle should be about more than wages. It should also be about breaking the back of AFSCME and the power it has gained in managing state government. Fighting for fair treatment and worker’s rights is one thing, but claiming the ability to unilaterally overrule any action the state wants to take is quite another. AFSCME needs to be put in their place, and somebody needs to do it NOW!!!!!
- Alan Mills - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 2:31 pm:
The problem with these articles is that they, again, conflate closing Tamms with overcrowding. Tamms supermax holds less than 200 prisoners. The overall population of the system is over 49,000. Moving 200 prisoners is going to have zero impact on the system. While overcrowding is indisputably a problem, closing Tamms will free up resources which will help the State solve that problem. It will not make the problem worse.
- Dan Bureaucrat - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 2:49 pm:
There are three points the media always misses here:
1) It is the minimum security prisons that are overcrowded, not the maximum security prisons, which are full. By AFSCME’s own estimate, Pontiac (the place where men from Tamms supermax are going) is at 96% capacity.
2) One of the dangers of overcrowding is the poor staff to inmate ratio. It would help alleviate the problems to move the bloated staff from Tamms, etc. to these overcrowded prisons. Moving just 175 prisoners won’t make a dent in the overcrowding, but moving 302 staff will significantly help the other prisons. Plus, it will save money by reducing overtime costs.
3) Who is going to support the governor when he reduces the prison population? Will the AP attack him again? How about legislators? How about the union?
- Anonymice - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 3:03 pm:
==I’ve had it with AFSCME. . . . Fighting for fair treatment and worker’s rights is one thing, but claiming the ability to unilaterally overrule any action the state wants to take is quite another.==
What unilateral ability to overrule anything? AFSCME asked the courts to excercise the courts’ authority to enforce a contract, and the courts are acting. If you don’t want AFSCME to have a contractual claim about an issue, don’t put it in the contract. And, if you’re tired of AFSCME, try being merit comp.
- wordslinger - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 3:09 pm:
Sir Walter Schnorf, would you care to expand? I’m not picking up what you’re laying down, and I’d be much obliged as to your insight.
Don’t start getting all Circular Firing Squad on us.
- Reality Check - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 3:17 pm:
The problem with Alan Mills is he, again, conflates everything with closing Tamms. The grievances, arbitration and court cases are about Carbondale, Chicago, Decatur, Dwight, Joliet, Murphysboro AND Tamms. They’re about destabilizing and making less safe the whole system. Take your blinders off.
- Dan Bureaucrat - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 4:19 pm:
Reduce the population already. The majority of these folks have low-level crimes anyway. Shave a few weeks off everyone’s sentence and get the big house in order. Is there anyone who doesn’t support that?
Sounds good until the AP comes back and writes a searing critique of reducing the prison population because someone reoffends who would have been out in a few weeks anyway.
- Factory worker - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 4:47 pm:
Most anyone that works in a prison knows how unsafe they are already. Some of these comments that suggest AFSCME has to give the green light for management to do anything is totally untrue. Since the governor appoints clueless people to manage frontline workers who know how the job is done fill in the for decision making by default.. In Dcfs management asks how the work should be done because they don’t know how. The prison industrial comPlex was created by weak kneed politicians and now the right wing pols and corporations want a piece of it. check their stock portfolios! Stop blaming workers. They deserve a safe place to work.
- steve schnorf - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 4:52 pm:
word, simply that even when their are no hidden agendas or duplicitous activities, these sorts of issues are so complicated and so bound up in contracts and labor law that we are in court in multiple venues all over the state trying to accomplish what one might expect to be rather routine and straightforward. And, with pensions/healthcare to come we ain’t seen nothing yet.
- Patrick McDonough - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 6:12 pm:
Rahm Emanuel looks like a clown. Many city of Chicago employees want mandatory drug testing for all employees and we can not get it. the same folks that put Rahm in power are shutting him down. That is from decades of Daley and Company.
- Maxine on Politics - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 6:15 pm:
Steven you are correct that “we ain’t seen nothing yet”, the worse is yet to come. AFSCME is getting ready for something and then the after election aftermath. Hmmm?
- Anonymous - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 7:18 pm:
If Quinn wants to reduce the number of inmates, why doesn’t he propose changing the sentencing laws.
Those commentators who insist that the prisons which are built for 33,000 and have 48,000 inmates should pick the facility they would be willing to work in for a week.
The minimum security facilities, like E.Moline, are overcrowded with maximum security inmates who DOC reclassified to make space for Tamms inmates at other maximum security facilities.
Quinn’s plan was rejected by COGFA, not just by AFSCME.
- thechampaignlife - Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 7:50 pm:
I’m not weighing in on the merits of the closings but, if that’s what the governor wanted to do, he should have just quietly transferred out all the inmates, attritioned out as many jobs as possible, and a year or so later make the easy decision to “close” the empty prisons. Who’d argue with closing empty prisons?
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Sep 18, 12 @ 7:41 am:
Thanks, Schnorf.