Gov. JB Pritzker has filled in gaps on the Illinois Prisoner Review Board more than a year after it was roiled in controversy.
Pritzker on Friday appointed two new members to the state parole and release board, including Timothy Nugent, who as mayor of Manteno helped Pritzker two years ago secure the construction of a Chinese-owned electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant despite complaints from residents and Republicans.
Pritzker appointed Nugent and Tracy Buckley, a contractor for the review board, as board members, pending Senate approval. Buckley previously served as the board’s chief of operations and as an administrator, the governor’s office said.
Their appointments fill two of six open seats on the fifteen-member panel, according to the state. Board members are paid nearly $148,000 annually.
The governor’s office on Friday also said Nugent would serve as chair of the Prisoner Review Board, but late Monday withdrew the chair designation for Nugent and said it was an error. The board currently does not have a designated chair.
In an interview with the Tribune over the weekend, Nugent said his support of the controversial Gotion manufacturing plant, a major economic development project championed by the governor, didn’t come up in his application process, and that he did not think it was connected to his appointment. In addition to his 20 years as mayor of Manteno, a town of roughly 9,000 in Kankakee County about 40 miles south of Chicago, Nugent had about two decades of experience as a law enforcement officer — including as police chief in Kankakee — which is more than the years of experience required for certain members of the board.
Nugent also said he thought it would be premature to offer potential reform ideas for the board, which faced widespread scrutiny last year.
“You make the best decision that you can based on the facts that you have at the time. I don’t have a crystal ball, I can’t tell what the future’s going to hold,” Nugent said. “The things that happened previously, I wasn’t involved in it. I don’t know the reason for it, and it’s not up to me to cast any aspersions about what happened back then.”
The appointments come after several controversies involving the board.
The state’s previous top parole official, Donald Shelton, resigned from his post in March 2024 after the board allowed Crosetti Brand, a man with a history of violence against women, to be released from state custody. Brand later attacked a pregnant woman he once dated and killed her 11-year-old son, Jayden Perkins, when the child came to his mother’s rescue, authorities said.
Another member of the board, LeAnn Miller, also resigned at the same time.
Brand was sentenced to life in prison for the killing and Jayden’s family has filed a lawsuit against the board alleging negligence in the case.
The case became a political challenge for Pritzker as the review board had been criticized even before the attack by state legislative Republicans for authorizing the early release of people convicted of killing police officers, children and committing mass murder.
In addition to the board resignations, the crimes against Jayden and his mother also led to the appointment of an executive director for the board. Pritzker was critical of how Brand’s case was handled.
Even before the Brand case, Republicans in 2022 were joined by some suburban Democratic lawmakers in declining two of Pritzker’s nominees for the board, which became a proxy fight over the issue of crime, with the GOP lawmakers saying the board was loaded with too many progressives who were too lenient in letting convicted criminals out of prison.
Pritzker signed into law several changes to the review board this year, including higher pay, longer terms starting next year and greater requirements for some members to have experience in law enforcement or criminal justice.
Republican Sen. Steve McClure of Springfield, who has been critical of the board under Pritzker’s leadership, on Tuesday condemned extending future board members’ terms from six years to eight years and Pritzker’s Friday afternoon appointment timing, which McClure said indicated a lack of transparency.
“This is definitely, I would say, one of the most troubling things about the Pritzker administration, is the way that they’ve handled the PRB,” McClure said, “and it looks like the governor is still operating out of the same playbook.”
In Manteno, Nugent was an early supporter of the Gotion project, appearing at a September 2023 news conference with Pritzker and Gotion officials to say the plant “brings the promise of a great future for the village, county, the region and the state.”
That’s when the Pritzker administration announced Gotion’s decision to locate its $2 billion electric vehicle lithium battery manufacturing plant to strengthen Illinois’ standing as a hub for EV manufacturing. At the time, Pritzker said it was the largest EV battery production investment in Illinois, making the plant due for more than half a billion dollars in state incentives.
But some residents complained they weren’t provided enough information about the project, which became a cause celebre for Republicans who led the way in stoking fears about the prospect of communist infiltration, given the Chinese ownership of the plant’s parent company.
The Manteno Village Board eventually voted 5-1 in December 2024 to rezone a former K-Mart property to make way for the new facility. A lawsuit has since been filed by a community group against Gotion’s presence in the town.