The economic impact of the possible closing of Pontiac Correctional Center could be devastating to that Livingston County community.

And now union officials say 100 inmates will be permanently transferred this week to prisons in East Moline and Taylorville.

Pontiac Mayor McCoy says right now poor communication between prison officials and business leaders has many folks on edge and rumors flying throughout the community.

Danny Jarrott, president of the prison employees union calls the transfers unusual. He says the 100 inmates were reclassified from medium security to minimum.
He says on Friday half of those inmates will actually move from the prison and officials won't say if it's part of the governor's plan for shutting it down.
Pontiac Mayor Scott McCoy says there are too many questions left unanswered right now.
" Even if you moved 100 a week which I think is quite a few it's gonna take you a lot of weeks to finish emptying out the correctional facility. So it just makes sense that this is very possibly the beginning of that. If it's not I just wish they would come out and say it's not," he said.

Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman Derek Schnapp says inmate transfers are routine and says they do not talk about them for security reasons.
Whether this week's transfers mean Pontiac Correctional Center is definitely closing is not clear.
However, the Governor's original closing plan called for the transfer of prisoners to begin in February or March of next year.
And Schnapp says that plan has not changed.