Veterans | Craig Adderley/Pexels
Veterans | Craig Adderley/Pexels
The U.S. Census Bureau reports there are approximately over 500,000 Illinois-native veterans.
Senator Sue Rezin took the opportunity to write legislation that’ll support the thousands of veterans.
“The residents of the Veterans Home served and protected our nation when we needed it but when they needed us to serve and protect them, our state and our governor failed them miserably,” Rezin said during a press conference. “Because of (Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s) failed leadership and mismanagement, this tragedy was allowed to happen. Nearly 500 days later, they continue to be failed as critical legislation ensuring that this never happens again has been ignored.”
The tragedy Rezin referred to during her speech was 36 veterans who died after catching COVID-19 at the LaSalle Veterans Home.
“As we near the end of the legislative session, I’m renewing my call to pass a series of legislative bills I introduced last year in response to the deadly (coronavirus) outbreak at the LaSalle Veterans Home and Governor Pritzker’s failure to implement critical recommendations from the Illinois auditor general’s performance audit of the legionnaire’s disease outbreak at the Quincy Veterans Home,” she said.
Rezin is focusing on three pieces of legislation to help veterans, which are are Senate bill 1445, 1471 and 3170.
The bills have been referred to the assignments committee.
Two of the bills were introduced in February 2021, while one was introduced in January 2022.
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