Roger Walker’s appointment as director of the Illinois Department of Corrections means a significant shift in leadership style for an agency that may be in need of a mediator at the top.
Personable and practical, Walker is more comfortable looking for solutions than problems. He says he may not be an employee’s best friend, but he wants his workers to know he listens. And he arrives at this post with no predetermined agenda.
In short, Roger Walker Jr. is no Donald Snyder Jr., the outspoken and controversial disciplinarian who headed corrections under former Republican Gov. George Ryan.
Snyder was more than willing to share his opinions on a wide variety of policy issues: a need for sentencing reform, treatment for drug offenders, and, in particular, tough new prison procedures.
Snyder may have been well-suited for his time at the helm of one of the state’s largest, and most high-profile agencies. When he walked into the job, he instituted several reforms — many hailed as long overdue — to give guards more control over prisons and gangs less. Yet throughout his tenure, he managed to anger the department’s union workers, who claimed he was pompous or worse, especially when he and Ryan began closing facilities to deal with the state’s budget crisis.
This administration will need someone who can calm those waters. Walker has a track record as a tough fiscal manager in tight budget times, but he has proven that he also has the skill to convince employees and the public to sign on. And he’s inclined to leave criminal justice policy to the governor’s office, preferring instead to stick to the management details.
He came up through the ranks of the Macon County sheriff’s department and was a year into his second term as the state’s first black sheriff when Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich called on him. Walker’s experience at making do with less in that office could help him weather the state’s continuing budget storm.
For most of his tenure as sheriff, Walker haggled with the county board, sought out grants and cut costs to keep his department in the black. When those moves came up short, he laid off more than two dozen employees. Walker then decided the cuts were too harsh and successfully championed a sales tax increase to reverse them.
Now, his ability to connect with people — rank-and-file workers, administrators and the public — may turn out to be his greatest asset. After decades of growth, the size of the state’s prison population has begun to stabilize. But the agency could face more budget cuts, as well as lingering tensions with its unionized workforce. And Walker will need every skill at his disposal to juggle these conflicting concerns. For now, though, longtime critics of the department seem willing to wait and see.
It’s easy to see how Walker mastered the political circuit of fish fries and VFW halls in the small east central Illinois towns that surround Decatur, his home base. He’s an imposing presence. His 6-foot frame and linebacker shoulders are hard to miss. Add a huge smile, a firm handshake and a sharp suit, and he commands attention.
But it’s the personality of the former sheriff that leaves the biggest impression. He’s a natural storyteller, relishing tales of his childhood in Decatur, and what it was like to grow up in a racially mixed neighborhood. He talks easily about his father playing guitar on the porch on Saturdays, about how he and his siblings would trade their mother’s home-baked desserts for toys from other kids in the neighborhood, about the minor league baseball games his family would watch on summer afternoons, and about the three decades he spent working his way up to the sheriff’s office.
He uses this neighborly, conversational style even when he’s driving home a point. Without being preachy, Walker’s stories inevitably lead back to some lesson about the importance of fiscal responsibility, religious devotion, common sense or a solid reputation.
If these specific tales weren’t practiced on the stump, the technique was.
Jerry Dawson, who worked with Walker for 26 years and took his place as Macon County sheriff, says Walker gained most of his storytelling skills in 1998 while running for Macon County sheriff. The primary contest was bitter, pitting two officers in the department against each other and opening rifts among local Democrats that remain today.
Walker, then a lieutenant and first-time candidate, faced a captain, Richard Bright, who had the backing of the three-term incumbent. Lee Holsapple, who was leaving the office to run for state representative, eventually lost to Republican Bill Mitchell in one of that year’s most hotly contested legislative races.
Walker says he had expected Holsapple to stay out of the primary. Instead, Walker says, he boosted Bright’s opportunities to look better to voters. Walker claims, for instance, that he was next in line to go to a training course with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but Holsapple sent Bright.
Still, Walker handily defeated Bright by a 59-41 margin. He beat his Republican opponent, a former FBI agent, 60-40. Four years later, Walker ran unopposed.
And he used this popularity to effect change. Early this year, he persuaded Macon County voters to approve a new sales tax to support public safety, even without the help of the Democrats on the county board — and only months after Walker had asked the board to give him a pay raise so he could make more than his subordinates.
Walker told skeptical taxpayers that the hike would amount to about what they would spend on a fast-food meal every year, or an extra $12.50 in taxes for anyone who spent as much as $5,000 a year on taxable goods.
Dawson remembers talking to officials in other counties who had gotten similar tax hikes for law enforcement. They told him not to get discouraged when the initiative failed. “It never passes the first time,” Dawson recalls hearing. In Macon County it was close, but the electorate endorsed the tax on the first try, 52 percent to 48 percent.
“I think that’s directly related to [Walker’s] personal relationship with voters,” Dawson says.
Meanwhile, Blagojevich was looking for a new director for corrections. His first choice, Ernesto Velasco, resigned amid allegations that guards in Cook County Jail beat inmates when he headed the facility. While Blagojevich looked for a replacement, he turned to Snyder to head the agency, though the governor had vilified his leadership during the campaign.
Lawmakers and editorial boards were on Blagojevich to name more minorities and more downstate residents to his Cabinet. In May, the governor announced that the 54-year-old sheriff would head corrections.
Abby Ottenhoff, a Blagojevich spokeswoman, says the governor was impressed by Walker’s lengthy law enforcement experience, as well as his personality. It helps, she says, to have someone who is able to work with subordinates and with the governor’s office. “His personality and his style make it much easier.”
Dawson says his old friend prefers using common sense to deal with problems, and is straightforward with people when discussing them. And this director, Dawson adds, won’t try to fix things that aren’t broken.
Walker readily admits his new responsibilities are on a vastly different scale. Instead of overseeing 90 corrections officers in the county jail, he now commands 13,500, the second-highest number of employees in any state agency. And the budget totals almost $1.3 billion a year. Even familiar problems, such as inmate diets, overcrowding or organizational structure, will carry far greater political implications in his new role.
So Walker spent his first months on the job meeting with subordinates and interest groups to learn about the agency. He brings a few ideas from his days in law enforcement, but, for now at least, he’s leaving the big picture to the governor.
And the governor does have a few items on his agenda. He has promised to increase the number of parole agents, cut administrative staff, beef up front-line positions and reopen Sheridan Correctional Center in LaSalle County as a drug-treatment facility.
Walker says he’ll institute these changes with the approach he used in the sheriff’s department. “I consider myself a baseball manager. My job is to put the best team out on the field every day, regardless of whether I like this guy or not,” he says.
In Little League, Walker continues, some children want to play first base because their heroes play first base, even if the kids are better suited to playing shortstop or third base. “That kid’s going to play shortstop or third base with me,” he stresses. “Forget about first base, you’re going there.”
In fact, finding the right people for the right positions may prove to be one of Walker’s toughest challenges. Early retirement took a heavy toll on the agency, with 2,100 corrections employees taking advantage of a measure approved last year that was designed to save state dollars.
That initiative thinned the ranks of upper-level managers who brought a lot of institutional knowledge to corrections, says James “Chip” Coldren Jr., president of the John Howard Association/For Prison Reform, an independent prison monitoring group.
Coldren points to this “brain drain” as one of the biggest obstacles Walker faces as he takes the helm. “What little senior management is left,” Coldren offers, “he needs to listen to.”
Coldren believes staff reductions have not yet made corrections workers’ jobs more dangerous. But Henry Bayer, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, which represents those workers, says there are reasons to be concerned.
The union leader is hopeful that Walker will use his position within the administration to steer more funds to the prison system. He says he’s encouraged by Walker’s leadership in proposing and promoting the referendum in Macon County. He wants Walker to go to bat for the Department of Corrections, too.
“The question is how he plays his hand. How aggressive is he going to be with the governor’s office? The department can’t go on forever with a shortage of staff without compromising security or its ability to run programs,” Bayer says.
Primarily, the union wants Blagojevich and Walker to open up almost all of the prisons that were shut down last year. The governor has announced plans to bring several of them back on line, but the process may take years. None are back in service yet.
Bayer is especially concerned about having enough maximum security beds following the closure of Joliet Correctional Center in 2002. He maintains the department is dealing with the loss of the 737 beds by reclassifying prisoners into less dangerous categories, meaning they can be housed in lower security facilities. Illinois, he adds, already is one of only a few states that allows some inmates to share cells in maximum security facilities.
But the state’s financial situation and a slight decline in the number of inmates strengthen the governor’s argument against new facilities.
Between fiscal year 1992 and fiscal year 2002, the state’s prison population increased by 41 percent, following policy moves to get tough on crime. As a result, the state has been building, on average, one new prison a year for more than a decade.
Yet, while prison populations continue to rise across the nation, the average number of inmates in Illinois fell by 3.9 percent between 2001 and 2002, according to a federal study released this summer. The number of women in Illinois prisons — until recently the fastest-growing segment of the state’s inmate population — also has dropped. Today, Illinois houses roughly 43,000 inmates in 26 adult prisons.
Nine states in all, including California, New York and Texas, are experiencing a drop in prison populations. This comes as a surprise, and surely a relief, to some correctional experts. But Walker, who started his law enforcement career as a patrolman in 1971, attributes the drop to a decade-long decline in violent crimes across the nation. He says rehabilitation programs may finally be taking hold.
Agency spokesman Sergio Molina suggests that one reason for the small drop could be more aggressive monitoring of parolees in Illinois. Under former Gov. Ryan, the department doubled the number of parole agents and made sure all of them were working in the field. Blagojevich, Molina says, wants to double the number again, eventually reaching 740, and add drug treatment programs aimed at keeping the prison population down.
Still, Coldren of the John Howard Association maintains it’s too early to determine why the prison population in Illinois has plateaued.
One concrete effect, though, is that it will allow the state to slow its prison construction program, which would also slow state spending. The department’s budget grew by 23 percent in Ryan’s first three years, a time when the prison population was on the rise. The agency’s budget peaked at $1.30 billion in fiscal year ’02, up from $867.1 million in fiscal year ’97. This year the budget is at $1.27 billion.
The slight dip in the prison population and Illinois’ deep budget hole mean the state is no longer rushing to build prisons. Indeed, agency officials predict the state can go five years without building another.
Already, work has been halted on a women’s prison in Hopkins Park near Kankakee and on a maximum security facility in Grayville in southeastern Illinois. Blagojevich wants to spend the dollars instead on infrastructure improvements in those communities.
Construction was completed, though, on the maximum security prison in Thompson, as well as a reception and classification facility in Joliet and a youth center in Rushville. (The system includes eight youth facilities and eight halfway houses.)
Besides the Joliet prison, the state has closed a youth facility, a work camp and halfway houses in four cities.
But Blagojevich’s plans to reopen Sheridan would add 1,600 beds. Two-thirds of those will be reserved for inmates who need treatment for drug addictions.
The department hopes to open the second half of Lawrence Correctional Center, which opened in 2001 but hasn’t been filled to capacity. This move is expected make another 1,000 beds available. And the agency expects to reopen a boot camp in Greene County and a work camp in Hannah City in the next fiscal year.
Bringing these facilities back on line should help the department keep its prison capacity at 158 percent — 100 percent is one prisoner per cell.
For the first time in two years, the agency is hiring new front-line correctional officers. Roughly 400 new officers are expected to join the agency this month, Molina says.
The agency is slated to hire 60 new parole agents this year, too, as part of Blagojevich’s “Operation Spotlight,” which is designed to tighten parole supervision. Walker argues that cracking down on parole violations could work well with the department’s drug treatment plans.
“One of the things I told [Blagojevich] when I had an interview was I thought too many guys who were going and committing crimes that had drug habits going in would come out with the same habits,” Walker says.
“It’s a good initiative for Sheridan to have a substance abuse place that will probably take in a lot more dangerous offenders than what we’ve been accustomed to.”
Largely, though, Walker shies from larger policy questions. He says sentencing issues — which inevitably affect prison populations — are between judges and defendants. At any rate, many of the biggest policy changes at corrections were under way before he stepped in.
He does want resources for his department, but he expects to have to do more with less. Bayer of AFSCME argues morale in the department is low — an assertion Walker and Coldren dispute — because of the loss of senior staff and lingering animosity over confrontations between the Ryan Administration and the union.
Ryan and Snyder angered corrections officers by shuttering several facilities, by proposing to privatize some food services and by suggesting workers should renegotiate pay raises or take voluntary days off to avoid layoffs. The union went to court to block the privatization move and refused to revisit its contract.
Employees marched by the thousands on the Capitol last spring to oppose Ryan’s moves. Blagojevich tapped that anger on the campaign trail by promising to reopen prisons and work camps and vowing not to hire private vendors to prepare prison food. He signed a law this summer prohibiting privatization.
Having an ally at the governor’s desk won’t guarantee good times for the union, though. Blagojevich has already irked labor for the way he reshuffled the agency’s structure. He eliminated all captain positions, which saved the state $17.3 million this year.
In a conciliatory move, most captains were allowed to take lower paying jobs in the department, but that means more than 80 captains became lieutenants, while, according to the union, 450 union members are qualified for promotions to lieutenant.
Another sore point for the union is Blagojevich’s decision not to reopen some of the facilities he said he would, including the youth facility at Valley View in St. Charles and a work camp in Paris in east central Illinois. The Democrat even vetoed money lawmakers set aside to put the Paris work camp back in business.
Walker wasn’t on the job when many of these decisions were made. But
Bayer clearly hopes he will aid labor’s cause. “Part of his job is to be an advocate within the administration. He needs to show the officers he cares about them, that he’s not making arbitrary policies.”
But Walker is no longer his own boss. He can’t ask voters directly for more money for prisons. He reports to Blagojevich, who opposes tax increases.
When Bryan Samuels became director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, he inherited an agency that looked to be on the upswing. The most hopeful sign: The number of state wards, which had reached 51,500 in 1997, has been sliced to some 20,000, thanks to a push for adoptions and subsidized guardianship.
Walker’s years of wrestling with budget problems in the Decatur area did leave him with an understanding of how to keep expenses down. “Believe it or not, and we’ve done it for years and years in the past, but state and local governments have always been able to operate with less.”
In Macon County, Walker cut costs by stopping hot breakfasts for inmates in the county jail. Instead of eating bacon and eggs in the morning, prisoners got cereal, Danish pastry, sandwiches or other cold meals. Their calorie intake dropped from 2,400 a day to 1,800 — still a legally permissible level under state standards — and the county saved money because it didn’t have to pay workers to serve breakfast. Instead, the workers prepared the morning meal after dinner.
Walker also reduced expenses by introducing a new schedule for many of his employees. Rather than working five days with two days off, officers would work six days, get two off, work six more and get three off. It’s a plan that worked so well the Decatur Police Department started asking him about it, Walker says.
But when Walker suggested applying the schedules to officers at the state department, he says, labor leaders balked.
“The union is different here,” Walker observes. “The police unions, they often have a tendency to listen. They’ll even try things on a trial basis. I find that up here it’s extremely difficult to even get them to try things, even on a trial basis. So I would probably opt for compromise.” But the compromise can only come, he adds, if the union extends a counteroffer.
Walker sees his solution as a practical one. Workers may not get every week-end off, but all of them would get every third weekend off. Plus, the arrangement would be better suited to deal with employees who call in sick or go on vacation, he argues. It also means employees would be scheduled for about three more days off a year compared to a normal weekly arrangement.
Bayer says simply that the director never convinced him that depriving senior employees of their weekends off would help the budget situation or solve staffing problems.
In the grand scheme of things, the scheduling issue may not amount to much, but it highlights the challenges Walker faces in trying to employ his practical, personable leadership style in his new position.
Dawson is convinced his old friend has what it takes to run the corrections agency. “He has pretty much the exact same problems on a much larger scale: unions, overcrowding and the budget.” Still, Bayer wants to see results before he’s convinced. “You can be the nicest guy in the world,” he says, “but if the prisons aren’t secure because you don’t have the resources, you know, you’re going to have problems.”
For his part, Walker acknowledges his popularity can only take him so far. He knows it’s only one tool he can use in his role as an administrator.
“I don’t expect every corrections officer to say, ‘Roger Walker is a great guy.’”
Daniel C. Vock is the Statehouse bureau chief for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.
Illinois Issues, October 2003
