Lawmakers want answers from deadly COVID outbreak at LaSalle Veterans home

Posted on March 20, 2024
State Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet), a member of the Legislative Audit Commission, said the emperor has no clothes – and that the then-chief of staff, Tony Kolbeck, was made a scapegoat. (Photo courtesy: WJBC/File)

By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – The top staff at the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs has changed out since the COVID outbreak which killed 36 people at the veterans home in La Salle in 2020 and 2021.

Department director Terry Prince praised the staff. “If you go to La Salle today. you will find at least half a dozen employees who have well over twenty years’ experience as a nurse aide. How do I konw? I was a registered nurse aide at the Ohio Veterans Home.” And, Prince added, he had to pitch in at the home during a weather emergency.

State Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet), a member of the Legislative Audit Commission, said the emperor has no clothes – and that the then-chief of staff, Tony Kolbeck, was made a scapegoat.

“You have a governor who widely criticized the previous governor for what happened at Quincy, and then got caught with his pants down in La Salle, and then they blamed Kolbeck, and what this (report of thousands of e-mails) shows me right here is that Kolbeck, far from sitting on his hands not doing anything, was actually crying out for help.”

Former Gov. Bruce Rauner was blamed for a fatal outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at the veterans home in Quincy.

Rose, the only member of the commission to lower the boom on the Pritzker administration, said it was really the Illinois Department of Public Health which should be on the hot seat.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].

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