Illinois Valley Times

Republican lawmakers have called for reform and put "key recommendations" made by the Illinois Auditor General into place to protect veterans in state care better.

State Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) introduced legislation on March 1 that would enact suggestions from a 2019 Quincy Veterans Home Performance Audit. The audit stems from a Legionnaires' disease outbreak at the facility. The legislation would classify something as an "outbreak" when two or more people at a veteran's facility come down with an infectious disease within two days of each other.

It would also mandate facility administrators to alert the Illinois Departments of Public Health and Veterans Affairs. Representatives from those agencies would visit the facility within a business day of being notified and post their inspection findings on their website.

Rezin and Rep. David Welter (R-Morris) believe that had Gov. J.B. Pritzker's Administration enforced these suggestions, a deadly COVID-19 outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans' Home could have been avoided.

Rezin said ignored recommendations led to "fatal errors" when it came to the administration's response to what became the deadliest outbreak at a state-run facility in the history of Illinois with 36 fatalities.

"The Pritzker Administration had nine months to implement these recommendations before the pandemic began, yet they failed to do so with devastating consequences," Rezin said in a release posted on her website. "They have had another three months to implement these recommendations since this tragic outbreak, yet again they still have not done so."

Legislative hearings into what happened at LaSalle revealed the Illinois Department of Public Health still didn't have an on-site visit policy, more than a year after the Auditor General released its report. It took officials at IDPH nearly two weeks to visit the facility. They discovered Centers of Disease Control and Prevention guidelines weren't being followed and a lack of PPE and proper hand sanitizer.