A new Illinois bill that is being co-sponsored by candidates from both sides of the aisle is looking to add safety measures to correctional facilities across Illinois, including the East Moline Correctional Facility.
Illinois House Bill 4743 was filed by Illinois Representative Gregg Johnson, and later co-sponsored by Illinois Representative Tony McCombie. The bill amends the unified code of corrections, allowing the Department of Corrections to establish an office of workplace safety. McCombie co-sponsored the bill, just four days after Johnson filed it.
The bill has hit home for both representatives co-sponsoring the bill. “I’m not going to lie, it is somewhat personal for me,” said Johnson. “Chris was a good friend of mine.” The loss of a friend from the same union he was in, Johnson still feels the impact of his friend’s death today. “He was still there when I left,” Johnson said. “When you leave corrections or a lot of these kinds of jobs, you have a little bit of survivor’s guilt anyway.” Johnson says the reason behind the bill comes from needing more safety regulations for the Department of Corrections. “It’s a very closed environment,” Johnson said. “They tend to keep things in house, and a lot of times information on what is going on in these facilities doesn’t come out.”
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On the Republican side, McCombie says she supported the bill because the man who lost his life last year at the East Moline Correctional Facility was from her hometown. “From my understanding, it was not his role to be doing this job,” said McCombie. “He should have not been in this piece of equipment, and certainly this could have been prevented. We want to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again.”
Both legislators believe the Department of Corrections doesn’t have enough safety measures for their workers. “Some would argue that there’s already OSHA regulations in place,” Johnson said. “But I do know for a fact that there are many times when the department doesn’t follow these regulations. This case was obviously a high profile incident in which they did not follow OSHA regulations. I think we need a state law in the books to fortify these OSHA regulations.”
McCombie believes the Department of Corrections needed to do something before accidents even took place. “Now the DOC reaches out to Johnson, rather than use him as a positive,” McCombie said. “They could’ve used him as a way to change the culture and view of what is at DOC, so why wait until there’s a problem.”
Both legislators hope this bill will cause a bigger chain reaction to not only the Department of Corrections, but other Illinois departments that need more support. “The bigger issue is why are we having to legislate for a common sense fix,” McCombie said.
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