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* Illinois had 21 State Police call centers before the governor consolidated those offices down to just four last week. There were problems Monday at one of those call centers…
Gov. Pat Quinn’s Illinois State Police communications consolidation reportedly hit a snag Monday when phone lines were “up and down” all day in Du Quoin.
The chief steward for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees telecommunications workers at Du Quoin, Cathy Bencini, said calls were dropped throughout the day, but the state was working to fix the problem by the afternoon. […]
Bencini also said the phone system did not have working caller-ID and lacked a global positioning satellite system, issues she said the state was going to address.
* And this is not good news, either, if true…
Bencini said the move left the call center short-staffed, with 16 telecommunications employees doing the work of 27 dispatchers.
Bencini said remaining Du Quoin dispatchers were “being forced to work 12-hour shifts” with overtime to make up for the lack of manpower.
* Meanwhile, in other state restructuring news…
Several legislators are criticizing Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration for considering moving some prison inmates out of Illinois. Democratic state Rep. Brandon Phelps of Harrisburg says consideration of the plan indicates the Corrections Department does not believe Illinois’ surviving prisons will be able to handle all the inmates moved from Tamms Correctional Center if it closes.
Quinn has said he wants to close Tamms and the all-female Dwight Correctional Center on Aug. 31 to save an estimated $48 million. Documents obtained by the Journal Gazette & Times Courier show at least nine inmates could be sent to prisons outside of Illinois in exchange for prisoners from that state.
* And…
The Lincoln and Logan Correctional Centers could face massive restructuring when the Dwight state prison for women closes late next month.
Preliminary reports from Gov. Pat Quinn’s office indicate that the Lincoln and Logan prisons, both at Lincoln, would essentially flip-flop inmate populations, with Logan also absorbing 980 women inmates from Dwight.
Logan now holds about 2,000 men, while Lincoln’s population is in the neighborhood of 1,000 women.
The plan is to transfer the 1,000 female inmates now housed in the Lincoln center, plus the women from Dwight, into the larger facility currently occupied by men at Logan.
But there’s a real problem ahead…
Plans have not been disclosed for the extra 1,000 male inmates who theoretically wouldn’t fit into the Lincoln Correctional Center, although rumors are circulating that some prisoners could be released and monitored electronically.
* More budget stuff…
* Budget cuts won’t work if they aren’t researched
* Federal money to help Illinois to change troubling youth prison statistic
* Some bars worry lack of video poker could hurt business - Schaumburg opted out of video gambling but neighboring Hoffman Estates is allowing it.
* Some south suburbs see upside to video gaming while many opt out
posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 9:23 am
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so problems are cropping up in implementing consolidations. we expected that. now i am waiting to hear about problems dealing with the 4,000 state employees who resigned by june 30. one friend said he had 3 or 4 retirement parties to go to on one night. at least that should have given a boost to the bars and restaurants.
Comment by langhorne Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 9:38 am
Where is Deanne Benos when you need her?
Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 9:46 am
From the upside article…
Umm, it is going to be a challenge to even cover half of your budget with 5 machines IMHO…
Assuming a 95% payoff rate in order for the machines to generate 50,000 in revenue they would have to take in a lot of money…
Lets do some math (remember the machine returns 95% of what is put in it)
$1,000,000 x .05 (gross) = 50,000 so $200,000 in bets per machine per year, less than 1K a day that does not seem so bad…
But wait, the venue only gets half of the gross from the machine, the machine owner gets the other half. So to get to $50,000 you need to do 2,000,000 in gross across 5 machines.
So at an average of $.25 per bet (that number seems high to me but it makes some of the math easier) you are going to need 8,000,000 bets made on your machines or 1.6 million bets per machine.
At 1.6 million bets per machine per year, that would work out to 360 days a year (going to assume you are closed once in a while) each day you would need to average 4,444 bets per machine per day.
Assuming you are open 12 hours a day that works out to 370 bets per hour or about 6 a minute, every minute for 12 hours a day on each machine.
Please note I intentionally left off the state and local cut on this.
It’s going to be interesting to see how many machines are going to be around in 3 years.
Comment by OneMan Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 9:49 am
–Several legislators are criticizing Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration for considering moving some prison inmates out of Illinois.–
Very counter-intuitive. Can we have a show-of-hands from citizens who favor giving the worst-of-the-worst a one-way ticket out-of-state?
Comment by wordslinger Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 9:57 am
@wordslinger -
That should have read “Several legislators with prisons in their districts are criticizing Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration…”.
My apologies.
- Truth in Sentencing
Comment by Yellow Dog Democrat Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 10:05 am
There are only 175 men in Tamms. It is a non-issue with regard to overcrowding.
Comment by state worker Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 10:40 am
“Can we have a show-of-hands from citizens who favor giving the worst-of-the-worst a one-way ticket out-of-state?”
But it’s only a trade for the WOTW from some other state. Not that it’s not a good idea (disrupting continuing criminal activities by gang leaders), but it’s not like we aren’t taking back someone else’s problem.
I suppose someone will object to it on the theoretical basis that Quinn and Obama will be in cahoots and *might* trade some non-violent Illinoisans to Gitmo for all the terrorists.
Comment by Chris Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 10:42 am
The headcount statement at the top is totally accurate. Because of the wanton disregard to consolidating in a planned, organized manner many telecommunicators were left taking layoffs. The 4-6 hour round trip drive between Effingham, Carmi, and Ullin added to the shift work was simply unmanageable to many. If anyone else leaves at this center there will be certain risk to public safety as well as the safety of the trooper on the road. This is a very serious situation that seems to be ignored from the Governor down through the ISP central headquarters.
Comment by KN3600 Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 10:50 am
–If anyone else leaves at this center there will be certain risk to public safety as well as the safety of the trooper on the road.–
No one in the nearby population wants those jobs, or is qualified or can be trained for those jobs? I find that hard to believe.
Comment by wordslinger Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 11:17 am
wordslinger, absolutely the nearby population wants these jobs, can be made qualified, and can be trained. Believe it. If the Governor would only open up hiring. That’s been the problem for the last 5-6 years. It takes approximately 6-12 months to train a telecommunicator to work alone. That is the key, work alone when they have to. The irony of all this mess is they must hire if they want to continue to support the trooper and the public. It’s not a question of someone wanting to work, it’s a question as to why the Governor won’t open up hiring for state police code positions. This is a statewide issue.
Comment by KN3600 Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 11:30 am
Not surprised about the ISP mess. Across all State agencies, most the senior planning expertise retired … a lot of it 10 years ago (2002 ERI), some of it 8 years ago (2004 ERI), and some of it in the last 45 days (betting on beating the pension reforms out the door).
I’ve been predicting for some time the state is close to meltdown on some of their critical systems. Actually, I know of a couple of unpublicized incidents that managed to be patched in the nick of time. The only thing that has been holding things together are the consultant contracts and a lot of those where the people actually know something (as opposed to just being politically connected) are being cut back.
More snafu’s to come …
Comment by RNUG Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 11:33 am
The ISP consolidations are not going to save the state a dime. The upfront cost to move the equipment to just Duquoin and Sfld exceeded 15 million dollars. No one is getting laid off, so there is no savings in personell. The ISP command felt they had to do something to show the governor’s office they were with the program and this was what they came up with. It’s all smoke and mirrors.
Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 11:43 am
Anon, I agree with your first statement. Consolidation is costing the State considerable money. There have been and will be more layoffs. Layoff terminations go into affect I believe the end of August. Headcount numbers at DuQuoin confirming this. Many have left because of substantial travel times between residence and work location. Communication consolidation, if done properly and without struggle to meet the demands of the Governor’s office and his folks at his office of management and budget, would not be a bad thing for ISP. Just do it right and with input from communication veterans left that know how to do it.
Comment by KN3600 Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 11:54 am
I’m tired of hearing about how concerned the downstate legislators are about overcrowding. They have simply latched on to this issue to keep “their” prisons open. The entire downstate House contingent, Phelps included, voted AGAINST the bill to reduce overcrowding, SB2621.
Comment by state worker Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 11:59 am
Anon, can you shed a little more light on why the cost to move those two tc centers was $15 million? Obviously, there’s more to it than calling Mayflower. Was new radio or computer hardware purchased? Remodeling?
Oh, and YDD, good one re: Ms. Benos.
Comment by Arthur Andersen Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 5:24 pm
@arthur anderson, The $15 million figure included approximately $12.5 million out of the FY13 budget to do the whole State. I don’t believe that money was appropriated by the legislature therefore Statewide consolidation slowed except for the centers at Springfield and DuQuoin. I would estimate between $3 million and $4 million likely has been spent between DuQuoin and Springfield. ISP has stated consolidation efforts will continue even without the $12.5 million out of the FY13 capital bill they hoped to get their hands on. ISP purchased new computer and electronic console hardware two years ago in anticipation of rolling out consolidation in a time frame that would have been more workable that what is happening now. The cost outlays this year were for other necessary hardware, T1 data backhaul needs, and Motorola’s labor to install all of it.
Comment by KN3600 Wednesday, Jul 25, 12 @ 7:27 pm
Official date for layoff is August 1st. TC’s involved in the consolidation have until that date to put in their notices for voluntary layoff. Believe 3 more will leave DuQuoin by then.(So that drops the head count to 13) Oh and of the 4 southern districts that consolidated only 2 TC’s were officially given pink slips. By the time CMS posts telecommunicator positions, conducts interviews, do background checks, set a hire date and then begin the year long training schedule. It will be aprx 18 months to replace the experienced TC’s that were lost due to the consolidations. All of the TC’s in one of the districts (7 total, 76 years of experience) chose not to go to DuQuoin because of the drive time. IMO, this was a knee jerk reaction to budget cuts and when given valid information on how this was going to cause issues, Springfield (the Govenor’s office and ISP Command) chose to ignore valid concerns regarding consolidation. It irrates me to no end that official ISP word about the consolidations “No problems, going as planned” is a baldfaced lie to the public.
Comment by Anon Thursday, Jul 26, 12 @ 11:55 am