Veterans home stalled by state budget debacle

Apartially completed shell of a building on Chicago’s Northwest Side stands as a bleak monument to the current futility of Illinois politics.

It’s supposed to be a new Illinois Veterans Home, a much-needed residence for 200 of the state’s military veterans who require nursing and health care services.

But construction on the project was halted July 1, the funding to complete it caught in the state budget mess.

Now the site at Oak Park Avenue and Forest Preserve Drive near the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center is locked and abandoned.

The exterior walls of the five-story structure are propped up with temporary braces, snow and ice taking up residence where workers ought to be making headway to complete the $70.5 million facility.

It’s a sad sight, if you know the back story. Sad and stupid.

“There is no more important building being constructed in the state of Illinois than this one,” a state official gushed when Gov. Pat Quinn presided over the groundbreaking in September 2014.

That was in the throes of Quinn’s reelection campaign. He lost.

What had been a pet pursuit of the former governor has since been relegated to political purgatory with more than 200 other partially complete state construction projects while Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic legislators remain at loggerheads over what comes next.

For today, at least, I will try to refrain from the usual finger-pointing about who is to blame, as my views are well-known, and neither side has covered itself in glory.

What’s really irritating in this instance is that the people who are getting hurt are the veterans who need this type of specialized housing, especially those who would benefit from the facility’s promised 44 beds for individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

The state already operates four homes for veterans, but the closest one is located in Manteno, a distance from where most of the state’s aging veteran population lives in Chicago. The facilities operate much as skilled nursing homes with specialized programming for veterans.

This comes at a point in history where you may have noticed that politicians of all stripes are falling over each other to tell us how important it is to show veterans we appreciate their service.

But they can’t even put aside their differences to keep moving forward on a project that we are told is 65 percent federally funded through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Meanwhile, state records show they’ve already shelled out nearly $15 million on the project, which doesn’t include whatever unpaid bills are caught in the state payment backlog.

Plus, for every dollar that someone imagines we are saving by not finishing the work, you can be sure that the project will cost that much more once it’s restarted.

“The Veterans Home is just sitting there rotting away, and it’s a shame,” said former 38th Ward Ald. Tim Cullerton, who helped bring the matter to my attention.

“It’s something you’d think we’d have some bipartisan support for,” he added. “It stings.”

Stinks is more like it. There was bipartisan support when Quinn announced the project in 2009 and when he announced it again in 2013 after the expected federal funding proved more elusive than expected.

Sen. John Mulroe (D-Chicago), whose district includes the Veterans Home site, said continuing the project requires legislation to reappropriate money earmarked for the project in prior years but left unspent.

Mulroe said Democrats haven’t offered such a bill because of the expectation Rauner would just veto it.

Rauner’s staff counters that the governor included the Veterans Home project in his original proposed 2016 budget while Democrats did not. If Democrats had included it in a limited capital appropriation bill that the governor signed in June, the project would have been funded and continued on schedule, they contend.

There you have it. Everybody’s in favor of helping the veterans.

Then just get it done.