Someone is pulling a fast one

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By Barb Ickes | Saturday, October 11, 2008 |

Something isn’t right here.

In an interview Tuesday, Illinois Rep. Mike Boland said he was dead certain that the rumors about dozens of prisoners from the Pontiac Correctional Center being moved to East Moline were false.

“East Moline is pretty well packed, plus they’re minimum security,” he said of our local prison. “I talked to the mayor (John Thodos), and he talked to the warden out there, and we’re told it isn’t true.”

Except that it is true.

“I guess we were all confused or got it wrong, anyway,” Boland said Wednesday. “I guess there was just a large amount of confusion. Some things that happen in this administration don’t make sense.”

You think?

“I talked to both assistant wardens and, at the time I talked to them on Monday and Tuesday, they had not been told the prisoners were coming,” Thodos said Wednesday. “They called me late Tuesday and told me. They said they typically get more notice.”

For starters, the staff at Pontiac, which is a maximum and high-medium security prison, was told last Friday to prepare 50 inmates for transfer to East Moline. We know this because the Times had a story Monday, explaining that the union that represents jailers was taking the matter to court.

Union officials are accusing Gov. Rod Blagojevich of more shenanigans, saying he’s using a back door to clear out Pontiac, because he wants to close the aged prison. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME, has filed a suit, claiming the governor has no right to close Pontiac, given that the Legislature already has approved its funding into 2009.

The union tried to stop the East Moline transfers in court Wednesday, but a judge in Livingston County, Ill., denied the motion for a temporary restraining order.

A union rep said Blagojevich is being “sneaky” by moving big chunks of prisoners to East Moline, beginning the process of emptying Pontiac.

Even if you favor the governor’s plan of closing one of the oldest prisons in the country and moving its inmates to a largely unused and state-of-the-art prison at Thomson, you have to wonder about his tactics.

For instance, why would the state wait until late Tuesday to tell the people at East Moline to expect 50 more prisoners on Friday? And why dump so many questionably appropriate prisoners in a minimum-security prison that’s in a residential area?

An AFSCME spokesman said of the last-minute transfers: “… large numbers like these are rare, if not unprecedented.”

But Department of Corrections spokesman Derek Schnapp said it happens all the time. When asked whether the East Moline Correctional Center ever has received 50 inmates in one day, he said, “I don’t know about East Moline.”

The people who would know, assistant wardens Todd VanWolvelaere and Steve Ballard, were told they were to refer all questions to Schnapp.

Asked whether a three-day notice was practical, he answered, “We can give it (notice) the day of. There is no set guideline on notification.”

That’s peculiar. Does the Department of Corrections truly make a habit of simply dumping dozens of inmates on unknowing state prisons? Surely not. The East Moline prison this week has 1,060 prisoners, and the place was built to accommodate 688. A fair warning would seem in order.

Thodos said he doesn’t think the prisoners are going to stick around. More likely, he said, the move is part of Blagojevich’s bigger plan.

“My personal opinion is that this is probably a stop on the way to Thomson,” he said.

Somebody probably ought to warn them.

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.