By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner made a stop in Pontiac Monday afternoon to recognize two public safety administrators who were instrumental in the passage of two bills.

Pontiac Police Chief Jim Woolford and Kent McCanless, director of the Woodford County Emergency Management Agency, worked on House Bills 0305 and 3469, which were supported by Representative Tom Bennett and Senator Jason Barickman.

Woolford said his part involved the hiring process, taking the minimum requirement of an associate’s degree and making 60 college credit hours an equivalent.

“For us, it opens the door to a lot more candidates. We have Wesleyan, Bradley, Illinois State University – there are a number of four year schools that don’t give associates degrees and those candidates will now be eligible to apply for positions within our departments. The beauty of this is police testing is a long, drawn out process, so we were finding out that, while these young men and women couldn’t apply, they would be graduated before we were very far in our testing process. It wasn’t fair of a system for those people and we wanted to make sure that we had a system in place that makes them eligible, raises our academic standards and raises the professionalism of policing,” Woolford said.