By Greg Cima
The Pantagraph
PONTIAC, Ill. — Lt. Lance Evans thinks the state is threatening to close Pontiac’s prison to scare workers into forgoing pay increases to keep their jobs.
“I think they’re using it to keep away raises,” Evans said. “Our contract’s up in July.”
Evans, who has worked at the Pontiac Correctional Center for 12 years, was headed to work Monday afternoon when he learned Gov. Rod Blagojevich has proposed closing the maximum- and medium-security prison by February. The plan would send about 1,300 of Pontiac’s 1,650 inmates to Thomson in Northern Illinois and the rest to other state facilities.
Other corrections officers declined comment as they left the prison Monday afternoon, and one said the officers had been instructed not to talk to news media. On their way out of the front gate, the officers passed a white temporary banner announcing “Correctional Employee Week.”
Evans said he thinks Pontiac’s specific uses for segregation and death row can’t be handled by Thomson, which has remained almost empty since it was built.
But Sergio Molina, a top aide to Illinois Department of Corrections Director Roger Walker, said one key reason Pontiac was chosen is its use as an all-segregation facility. He said that, in transferring prisoners to Thomson, the state would be moving inmates from single-prisoner cells to similar single-prisoner cells.
Molina said Thomson has been well-maintained and he does not think a lot of preparation is needed for prisoners. And he said it is a priority to open the new and empty “state-of-the-art” facility that cost $140 million to build.
Molina said he thinks the prison was the second-most expensive public works project in Illinois history, falling only behind the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago.
Henry Bayer, executive director of AFSCME Illinois Council 31, which represents the guards, said the state’s prison system is filled 35 percent beyond the rated capacity and the state won’t have sufficient maximum-security beds if Pontiac is closed. He said the union will fight the proposal to close Pontiac as vigorously as it did in stopping the closures of prisons in Vandalia and St. Charles.
“The number of inmates is not abating,” Bayer said.
Bayer believes the state does want to close a prison and doesn’t think the proposal is a scare tactic. But he said the union will fight for its members at Pontiac.
The 551 Pontiac employees would be offered jobs at other area prisons, such as Stateville, Sheridan, Dwight and Lincoln, state officials have said. Evans, for instance, said he would have to move if his job were transferred to Thomson.
Eureka Mayor Scott Punke has worked for the Illinois Department of Corrections for 20 years. He said he could not comment as an IDOC employee, but that Eureka would see an effect in its economy because a handful of residents work at the facility. He also said several workers who do not live in Pontiac frequently use the town’s services and stores.
Buddy Maupin, regional director of AFSCME, was reluctant to comment on a possible Pontiac closing.
“We have received no communications from the Department of Corrections,” Maupin said. However, he added “from a policy perspective, we can’t afford to close a single bed.”
Reporters Kurt Erickson and Tony Sapochetti contributed information for this story.
Copyright 2008 The Pantagraph