Quincy Reporter

For veteran state Rep. Randy Frese (R-Paloma) the words still painfully ring in his ears.

“Inefficient, reactive and chaotic, that’s how the IDHS Inspector General Report described the LaSalle Veterans' Home’s management response to the COVID-19 outbreak last fall that resulted in the deaths of 36 people and hundreds of positive COVID cases among both residents and staff,” Frese said during a recent press conference posted to YouTube in which Republican lawmakers called for immediate hearings into what they see as gross negligence that took place. “The report also tells us that this disaster should and perhaps could have been prevented.”

Republican lawmakers are pointing an accusatory finger at Gov. J.B. Pritzker and what they see as the undeniable shortcomings of the team he put in place to guard against such tragedies.

"[Pritzker's] hand-picked agency director took a hands-off approach to managing the crisis," House Minority Leader Jim Durkin recently told the DuPage Policy Journal. "Gov. Pritzker and his administration failed to lead and failed our veterans."

Frese said none of it had to be.

“In May of 2019 before COVID, a health safety audit of Illinois veterans home policies and procedures discovered serious problems including that several policies were incomplete and outdated and while various policies existed it was not clear how they were integrated into an infection control program,” he said. “In 2019, the director of IDHS was told about the need to develop standardized controls and to ensure that these polices would be revised annually and communicated adequately to staff. None of this was done.”

As recently as last November, Frese said he and several other Republican members of the House Veteran Affairs Committee sent a letter to Chairperson Stephanie Kifowit requesting that an immediate hearing be convened to investigate the spread of COVID-19 at Illinois veterans homes. Again, he insists little action was taken.

“It took a month to get a hearing from House Democrats and then no immediate action was taken,” he added. “This scathing report reinforces the need for immediate hearings. We have a responsibility for oversight, to call witnesses, get to the bottom of what happened. We need to gather as much information as possible. I’m asking our new speaker and our governor to work with us to protect the heroes in our care at our state homes.”