Rebuilding would be long process
After more than four months closed to the public, the Illinois State Museum appears poised to reopen, although things wouldn’t be quite the same.
The state agency which controls the museum system announced tentative plans on Monday to reopen the flagship facility in Springfield and three of its five satellites, pending legislative approval.
Opened in 1877, the Illinois State Museum system includes the namesake Illinois State Museum in Springfield, a Research and Collections Center in Springfield, Dickson Mounds museum near Lewistown, and art galleries in Lockport, Chicago and Rend Lake. The museum system is under the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Under DNR’s reopening plan, the museum would begin charging an admission fee and close the branches in Chicago and Rend Lake. The museum’s accounting and management structures would also be reorganized.
The system officially closed to the public on Oct. 1, 2015, at the direction of Gov. Bruce Rauner, who framed the closure as a cost-cutting move. Rauner planned to fire many of the system’s employees, but a lawsuit from AFSCME prevented unionized workers from being laid off. Those workers continued working behind locked doors during the public closure. Several non-union managers retired or found other jobs before the layoffs were to occur.
Shortly after Rauner announced plans to close the museum in June 2015, Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, sponsored Senate Bill 317 to keep the museum open. The bill passed the Senate in August and passed the House in November. On Feb. 5, Rauner issued an amendatory veto of the bill, calling for implementation of a fee system and partnerships with other public and private entities to help fund the museum.
“While the State is in the midst of a crisis caused by decades of fiscal mismanagement, as long as this bill fails to offer any plan to help the museum become self-supporting, it is just an empty and broken promise to the taxpayers of Illinois,” Rauner wrote in his veto message to the General Assembly.
The bill now goes back to the legislature for approval or an override vote.
Wayne Rosenthal, director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, announced Feb. 8 that the museum will reopen if the legislature approves Rauner’s changes to SB317. Rosenthal said DNR worked with Rauner’s office to find a “sustainable solution” to reopen the museum.
“As you all well know, the State of Illinois is in a financial mess,” Rosenthal said. “We’ve got a crisis, so to move forward, it’s important to develop new models and new ways of thinking about how we operate and fund state government.”
Guerry Suggs, a member of the Illinois State Museum Society, which supports the museum system, says he’s pleased that DNR plans to reopen the museum.
“I think this is something we can live with,” he said, referring to DNR’s proposed changes. “Both sides are in effect giving something here. My main goal has been and continues to be getting the museum open to the public again. I’m in favor of moving forward.”
Suggs says DNR already had the ability to institute an admission fee, and the museum previously examined that option but ultimately didn’t implement it. Rauner’s amendatory veto allows the DNR director to create an admission fee for the museum, instead of requiring the agency to pass an administrative rule that would require approval by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.
The four-month closure damaged the museum, Suggs says, but now it’s time to rebuild. The museum’s national accreditation has been suspended, and only a handful of the managers who were pushed out are available for rehire.
“There has been a lot of damage done in terms of management and personal leaders,” Suggs said. “Is it irreparable? No.”
Manar, who sponsored the Senate bill to keep the museum open, said he’s still reviewing the governor’s changes.
“I’ve been committed for months to try and find a solution to prevent what has occurred and then to get the doors back open,” he said.
Manar also said that the changes to his bill were things the administration could have done before the museum closed, such as implementing an admission fee.
“If that was the savior of the state museum,” Manar said, “it was irresponsible for the closure to have gone on this long.”
Contact Patrick Yeagle at [email protected].
