SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Republicans in the Illinois Legislature are wasting no time throwing the blame at Democratic Governor JB Pritzker for the handling of COVID-19 outbreak at a veterans home during the early stages of the pandemic.
A 2020 outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans home claimed 36 lives, and new state audit alleges Pritzker didn’t take it seriously at first.
“When I think about the heroes living our state’s veterans homes, I can’t help but think of my own family, and the kind of care I would want to see them get in their final years,” said State Rep. Mark Luft (R-Pekin), also Pekin’s Mayor, at a news conference. “I think about how angry I’d be if the Governor promised to take care of them, only to see his administration fatally mismanage a predictable outbreak during a known pandemic.”
Luft and other Republicans say Pritzker needs to take responsibility for what they call his failures during that outbreak.
“The people who died at the LaSalle Veterans Home bravely sacrificed in service of our nation,” said Luft. “We will never be able to fully repay them for what they have done, but it is our duty to try, to ensure that in their final years, they are cared for.”
While Luft and others say Pritzker needs to take responsibility, Democrats gave much the same criticism to then-Governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican, after a deadly Legionnaires outbreak in 2015 at the Quincy Veterans Home.
Results of a state audit there are similar to ones in the audit post-LaSalle — an alleged lack of full responsibility, and in the case of the 2015 outbreak, instances of miscommunication and allegations of the state not doing everything Rauner said it did.
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