Three months after an investigation into the COVID outbreak that killed 36 residents at the state-run veterans’ home in LaSalle found the facility’s management was “ineffective, reactive and…chaotic” responding to the virus’ spread, Republicans in the Illinois House are once again agitating for more information from Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration.
GOP members are also renewing their call for Attorney General Kwame Raoul to open a criminal probe into the fatal outbreak, which infected nearly all the residents at the LaSalle Veterans’ Home last fall, killing more than a quarter of the facility’s population, and spreading to more than 100 staff members.
Capitol Fax com - Your Illinois News Radar » Deputy governor says IDVA kept information from her and lied about LaSalle capitolfax.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from capitolfax.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD – Illinois budget officials said Thursday that revenues are flowing into state coffers at a faster pace than previously estimated, meaning lawmakers will have more money to work with as they try to finalize a new budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
The Governor’s Office of Management and Budget officially raised its revenue estimate for the current fiscal year by more than $1.4 billion and by $842 million for the upcoming fiscal year.
Those figures are similar to the latest revised estimates from the General Assembly’s budget monitoring agency, the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, which said last week that revenues for the current year would go up about $2 billion while next year’s revenues would be $792 million more than previously forecasted.
LaSalle investigation prompts legislation strengthening inspectors general Capitolnewsillinois com capitolnewsillinois.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from capitolnewsillinois.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Originally published on May 3, 2021 1:32 am
Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday expressed regret over hiring former Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs Director Linda Chapa LaVia as critics lash out after a scathing report examining what led to the massive COVID-19 outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans Home last fall, which left 36 residents dead.
The investigation, which Pritzker ordered a few weeks into the deadly outbreak in November, found systemic organizational problems and failures to communicate in both the LaSalle Home and the state’s Department of Veteran Affairs, which runs the facility and three other veterans homes in Illinois.
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Along with inconsistent and confusing COVID protocols that led to lax enforcement among staff, the report also found former agency Director Linda Chapa LaVia “abdicated” her responsibilities to her chief of staff, who in essence performed three jobs. The failure to fill crucial vacant jobs inevitably left the chief of staff and other