Despite a legal setback, the head of the union representing about 160 state workers at a juvenile detention center near St. Charles vowed Wednesday that his group would press lawmakers to keep the state from closing the facility.
Jim Howell, president of Local 117 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the union would fight on despite a Cook County judge’s refusal Tuesday to keep the state from shutting down the Valley View Illinois Youth Center on May 15.
“We’re not out of the fight by a long shot,” Howell said from Springfield at a rally protesting Gov. George Ryan’s budget cuts.
The state plans to close the center in Kane County and a minimum-security prison in Vienna as part of cost-cutting measures to deal with a budget shortfall of nearly $1 billion. About 356 state workers will be affected by the Vienna shutdown.
Ryan originally marked the facilities for closing Sept. 30, but this month the state advanced the shutdown date to May.
As of this week, nearly half of the 300 Valley View inmates had been moved to other youth facilities, according to the Department of Corrections.
The facility on the south bank of the Fox River in St. Charles Township costs about $13.6 million a year to operate.
The union says the May 15 closing is illegal because the General Assembly has approved funding for the facilities through June 30.
Howell said the union was considering an appeal of Circuit Judge Gay-Lloyd Lott’s ruling, which came the same day a Johnson County Circuit Court judge granted the union’s request for a temporary restraining order against the early shutdown of the prison in Vienna.
Meanwhile, Howell said the union would lobby members of the Senate Appropriations Committee for a reprieve. The House this month passed legislation to keep the facilities open.
Lott denied the union’s request for a temporary restraining order.
“Both the governor and the director of the Department of Corrections are well within their constitutional and statutory authority to close the youth centers,” Lott ruled.
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