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SPRING ALLERGY SEASON
Experts predict rough allergy season ahead By ADAM POULISSE • apoulisse@shawmedia.com The upcoming allergy season could make an allergy sufferer’s eyes water. With winter weather slowly moving out and higher spring temperatures moving in, the wet forecast and pollen should create a perfect storm of allergies this spring, said Dr. Joseph Leija, an allergist and founder of the Gottlieb Allergy Count at Gottlieb Hospital in Melrose Park. “I can see trees are already budding quite a bit,” Leija said. “We need a little more warming time. The weather situation is very important. Warm temperatures and rain could create tree growth, and pollen.” Every morning at 4 a.m. from late February to October, Leija, 84, climbs atop the roof of Gottlieb to take readings from a special machine that counts pollen, which provides an accurate pollen count for about a 50mile radius, Leija said. “It has been very low,” he said. “By this time of year there should be more pollen in the air, but it’s very minimal.” According to a spring allergy outlook from Accuweather, a slow climb out of winter weather will delay the spring season. But when it hits, it’ll be “intense.” The World Allergy Organization is hosting World Allergy Week from April 13 to 19, which addresses “the greater need for awareness and understanding of allergy topics as well as the exchange of ideas and collaboration in order to address treatment and quality-of-life issues related to the care of patients with allergic rhinitis and asthma,” according to the website. Pollen and mold are common in DeKalb County, and can be tough on people living here, said Dr. Peter Baum, an allergist at KishHealth System Physician Group in Sycamore, who is a fellow with the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. “If it’s pretty windy, which it often is in DeKalb, particularly in the spring, then it can get pretty widespread,” Baum said. “We don’t have big buildings like Chicago and we don’t have a lake. DeKalb is in an unfortunate geographic
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University works to reconcile audit issue By BRETT ROWLAND browland@shawmedia.com
position for allergy sufferers.” Pollen season is broken up into three phases, Baum said: Tree pollen proliferates from mid-March to mid-May, grass pollen is common from mid-May to the beginning of July, and then ragweed pollen from mid-August to the first frost. Plus, mold in between. “The various trees [such as] maple, elm and oak, they all pollinate at different times, but usually it’s mid-March to mid-May,” Baum said. “With grass pollen, we’re talking prairie grass, not lawn grass. Those are microscopic particles that travel miles and miles. Those with a genetic predisposition to develop allergies will develop symptoms similar to hay fever and, in some people, asthma.”
See ALLERGIES, page A4
Illustration by R. Scott Helmchen – shelmchen@shawmedia.com
DeKALB – Northern Illinois University’s new finance boss has formed a task force to address issues raised by a state audit released last week. The audit found the university failed to comply with internal control guidelines and improperly reimbursed a temporary employee $31,945 for travel between his home in Washington state and work from July 2013 to June 2014. In a memo to NIU officials Wednesday, Alan Phillips, the university’s vice president of administration and finance, said he would look at “reforming internal processes concerning procurement and contracts” and form a task force that would make changes to “address issues identified in the audit report.” Phillips said the travel reimbursements paid to consultant Ron Walters “were the result of an inappropriate application of state travel regulations by staff.” When auditors examined the travel expenses, they noted that $31,945 of the $46,501 were reimbursements for travel that shouldn’t have been reimbursed, according to the audit. Walters, an architect and former head of consulting for Deloitte, worked on the university’s Bold Futures project in 2014. By March of that year, Walters was being paid $30,000 a
month, records show. Auditors recommended the university recoup travel expenses from the employee. “We are working to resolve this issue in accordance with the Auditor General’s direction,” Phillips wrote in the memo. Phillips said the university was waiting for a determination from the Higher Education Travel Control Board. Once the board makes a recommendation on the travel expenses, Phillips said the university would comply with the recommendation. However, he said it would be premature to seek to recoup the travel expenses before a finding from the board. However, Phillips also said that the university had agreed to pay for Walters’ travel and that if NIU recovers the money, “there may in fact be other issues we have to address.” But, he emphasized that state law superseded any contract the university had with Walters and that the university would comply with state law. “The money has to be paid back,” he said. “We don’t know what the remedy will be, but we will fix this in accordance with state guidelines.” The state audit further found that the university failed to comply with the Fiscal Control and Internal Auditing Act. To evaluate compliance, evaluation forms were
See NIU, page A4
Inmate overpowers guard, escapes from Kankakee jail The ASSOCIATED PRESS KANKAKEE – A man awaiting sentencing for murder escaped from a jail Wednesday in eastern Illinois after beating a guard into unconsciousness, taking his keys and uniform and speeding off in his SUV. Kamron T. Taylor, who has a history of escape attempts, fled from the Jerome Combs Detention Center in Kankakee at about 3 a.m. He somehow escaped from his cell, hid inside the facility, then beat and choked the guard who was making rounds, said Kankakee County Sheriff Timothy Bukowski.
Taylor, a 23-year-old from Kankakee, is considered armed and dangerous, the sheriff said. He was convicted of first-degree murder in February and faces a sentence of 45 years to life in prison. Besides hunting him down, investigators were eager to determine how Taylor got free in what was Kamron T. the first successful Taylor escape from the decade-old lockup housing about 450 detainees. “The speculation on my part is
somebody didn’t do their job properly,” Bukowski said. After getting free from his twoman cell in a lockdown unit, Taylor hid out and attacked the guard, a military veteran with 10 years of correctional experience, Bukowski said. By wearing the guard’s uniform, Taylor was able to fool other guards in a master control room who opened three sets of doors for him after visual verification by surveillance video, Bukowski said. Once outside, the suspect repeatedly pressed the guard’s key fob to locate his Chevrolet Equinox in a parking lot and drive away.
Authorities didn’t learn of the escape until about 30 minutes later, when jail staff found the wounded officer, who is hospitalized in intensive care with head wounds. “He was in and out of consciousness, unable to understand the questions that were given to him,” Bukowski said of the guard at a news conference. A few hours after sunrise, officers found the abandoned SUV in a residential area of Kankakee and approached the vehicle with their guns drawn. But Taylor was nowhere to be found and it wasn’t clear whether he
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fled on foot or someone picked him up in another vehicle, the sheriff said. At one point Wednesday, authorities issued an alert for a 15-yearold girl who they believed was with Taylor. Illinois State Police later announced the girl had been found, but did not say where or how officials found her or whether she had been with Taylor. Jail staffing levels and procedures will be re-examined, but Bukowski said Taylor’s history of violence and previous escape attempts didn’t necessarily single him out for stricter security measures.
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