We need a real budget solution like HB174–a plan to fairly raise the revenue we need to stop cuts and fully fund vital human services. 

By calling your representative, you will strengthen the call for a fair, responsible budget for Illinois families–one that will stop damaging cuts and protect our future.

Making the call is simple:

1. Find your representative and their phone number here.
2. Call them TODAY between 9am and 5pm.
3. Tell the person who answers the phone your name, where you live, and that you’re counting on them to protect funding for critical programs by supporting HB 174.
4. Spread the word! Make sure your friends, family and co-workers know that we’ll all do better with a responsible budget. Tell them to call today to make their voice heard.
5. Click here to let us know you made the call today to stop the cuts.

According to the Geneva Sun:

All across the state, it’s the same story. Since Illinois started its new fiscal year on July 1, social service agencies have gone without the precious state money they need to survive. Some have been paid in dribs and drabs, but not enough to keep going full steam. And some haven’t been paid at all for months.

When these service providers contact their state government to find out what’s going on, they’re all being told the same thing: there’s no money.

The Sun story features a few agencies hit hard by lack of payment from the state, including Fox Valley Older Adult Services:

[Cindy] Worsley is the executive director of Fox Valley Older Adult Services. The not-for-profit company, based in Sandwich, has been providing help and care to seniors in the Fox Valley for 37 years. It operates three adult day care sites — one in Aurora (called Rachel’s Place), one in Sandwich, and one in DeKalb — and provides in-home care, meals and transportation services to more than 200 seniors each day.

But now, Worsley is preparing for the worst. The services she provides are dependent on state funding to continue, and those payments are months late. She did receive a check from the state about six weeks ago, she said, which paid the state’s obligations through June. But she’s essentially been operating since July with no state cash at all, and she’s owed about $140,000.

Worsley said Fox Valley Older Adult Services has burned through its reserves and is talking with banks now about extending lines of credit. And now she’s faced with a dire situation — if the state doesn’t pay its bills, she’ll have to take drastic measures, up to and including closing her doors.

Mutual Ground, a domestic violence shelter and sexual abuse counseling center in Aurora, is owed 56% of its budget–$300,000–and will be forced to close unless the state pays up, according to Executive Director Linda Healy.

“We’re going to do the work we’re supposed to be doing and pay until we don’t have a dime more,” she said.

But Healy worries that with all the attention paid to the state’s budget woes, the focus will drift from the real people being affected.

On Tuesday morning, she said, she received two calls from local hospitals, reporting battered women. One of them, she said, had just given birth and was completely covered in bruises. Both women were seeking shelter at Mutual Ground, a shelter that, if nothing changes, will be unavailable within weeks.

“The emphasis needs to be on what happens to these people,” she said.

As the State Journal-Register reports:

The report, “Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril,” portrays Illinois and eight other states as facing fiscal hardships that are just as tough as California’s, which at one point this year was making payments with IOUs.

Authors of the report, issued by the Pew Center on the States, cited Illinois for “its lack of fiscal discipline to balance its state budget.” Illinois’ $13.2 billion budget gap for fiscal year 2010 was among the top three in the country, they said.

“Officials have used all sorts of short-term approaches to address the budget gaps, but two of the most significant and consequential are to put off paying bills and skimp on the state’s annual pension payments,” the report said.

…

Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said Illinois’ status as one of the 10 most troubled states is “a pretty clear indicator” that officials must do more to address state government’s financial problems.

“They don’t have a lot of fiscal fat left in the budget,” she said.

From the Coalition’s website:

We call on every elected official in Illinois to acknowledge that this fiscal crisis, brought on by a long-standing structural budget deficit and an economic downturn, cannot be solved without significant new revenue. The revenue mix contained in HB 174—a comprehensive tax-reform package passed by the Illinois Senate and approved by a committee of the Illinois House—is the most responsible framework for such a solution.

Tuesday’s kick-off featured Senate President John Cullerton, Illinois Board of Education Chairman Jesse Ruiz, former Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch, and many others who shared their stories of the harm caused by deep budget cuts.

From ABC 7 News:

A new organization called the Responsible Budget Coalition has united 93 groups to try to solve the state’s budget crisis.

The coalition seeks public and legislative support for tax reform to raise more revenue, maintain public services, and save jobs.

Senate President John Cullerton said the senate wanted to be fair to low and moderate income-earners when it voted to increase the state income tax.

“So we said: Let’s increase the earned income tax credit. Let’s increase the personal exemption, and put that right in the bill. And give some property tax relief to folks who pay property tax. We put that in the bill,” said John Cullerton, (D) Senate president.

Senator Cullerton urged the House to pass that legislation, so Illinois can pay its bills on time, fund its pensions, and meet its other needs.

State budget cuts may soon be taking a toll on a program that many disabled people rely on.

Officials at the Southern Illinois Center for Independent Living (SICIL) say they recently learned about the cuts, but are hoping they can change lawmakers’ minds.

The proposed decrease in funding would eliminate the center’s Personal Assistant Screening, Training and Referral Program.

That program provides people who need help with a list of assistants who have passed a background check.

Gary Phelps from SICIL says this is important to those who need the help, “To be assured that the individual that’s coming into their home is going to care for them, not steal from them, treat them in a humane and healthy and safe way… It’s priceless.”

A disabled couple living in Carbondale fears the elimination of the program would ultimately mean they would be unable to find a competent personal assistant, and forced to live in a nursing home.

The cuts are scheduled to take effect October first.

The Doings LaGrange has more:

State budget reform, funding for social services and accountability in Springfield were on the minds of area residents at a town hall meeting Tuesday in a La Grange senior center.

IRep. Michael Zalewski, D-21st, Chicago, fielded questions from 50 constituents, and community representatives at the Aging Care Connections center. The 21st district includes the eastern portions of La Grange and LaGrange Park, nine other towns and the southwest side of Chicago.

Elected in November, the freshman representative said his first vote in office was in favor of creating a committee to investigate former Gov. Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges.

Most of the legislature’s attention since then has been devoted to funding and budget issues, he said, including cuts as well as the capital bill which will bring needed jobs and projects to the 21st district and throughout the state.

When asked to show political courage, work for bipartisan leadership and be a fresh voice for change, Zalewski smiled and said he appreciated the challenge.

“To me, saying no to a state income tax increase was as much leadership as I could demonstrate until we get spending reform,” he said. “I did what I thought was best for my constituents.

“Saying no when everyone wants you to say yes isn’t easy. There were days when it wasn’t as fun as I thought this job would be.”

Brookfield resident Alice Palach-Spera, whose 12-year-old son has Down syndrome, urged Zalewski to restore social service funding cuts.

“What is being done to help our most vulnerable citizens. It’s embarrassing that Illinois is 51st in terms of funding for people with disabilities,” Palach-Spera said. “I use the respite program, but what about the children or adults in group homes. Are we going to throw them out on the street.”

Zalewski responded that each agency and program has to make its case for continued funding from the governor’s discretionary fund, which hasn’t been defined by clear guidelines.

Social service agencies and state programs had been awaiting the announcement since July 15th–when the General Assembly passed a lump-sum budget that left much uncertainty about how money would be spent in the state and what programs would suffer cuts.

The Associated Press has more on Governor Quinn’s plan:

Gov. Pat Quinn used his new authority over the state budget on Friday to reduce spending cuts for programs that help abused children and other vulnerable Illinois residents while offering bad news for prison guards, college students and more.

The Democratic governor argued that even after slashing the budget, Illinois has a major hole in its budget and unmet needs in important services. The fairest way to change that is to raise the income tax, he said.

“We have cut. We have cut from here to kingdom come,” Quinn said at a news conference. “We’ve done all this, but we have to deal with the fiscal reality that we have a revenue shortfall to pay our bills.”

Lawmakers gave Quinn the job of deciding where to cut about $1 billion in spending and how to divvy up $3.4 billion in lump sums. Quinn offered his first explanation Friday of what he intends to do.

Much of the money available will be used to pay local organizations that provide child care, drug counseling and similar services on behalf of the state. They still face a reduction in state support but not the deep cuts that were once proposed.

Quinn also put money into the state’s child-welfare agency and the State Board of Education, reversing some of the school cuts that were announced last week.

But Quinn said he still plans to eliminate about 2,600 jobs, including 1,000 at the Department of Corrections. That amounts to nearly 10 percent of the department’s total work force.

Quinn chief of staff Jerome Stermer said one prison might be closed, others would be reduced in size and the number of inmates would be cut. He would provide no details.

Money for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, which provides college scholarships, will be cut by more than half. As a result, the commission will not offer its Monetary Award Program next spring.

Unions representing state employees or workers at local agencies that are paid by the state took up Quinn’s call for a tax increase.

“Every Illinoisan must demand that lawmakers and the governor renounce these damaging cuts, commit to raising new revenue, and return to the Capitol as soon as necessary to fix this broken budget,” said Henry Bayer, the top Illinois official for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Keith Kelleher, Illinois president of the Service Employees International Union, added: “The General Assembly’s failure to pass a responsible budget with a plan for new revenue means that vital programs and services that families count on face billions of dollars in devastating cuts.”

From Chicago Public Radio’s Sam Hudzik:

It’s been two weeks since Governor Pat Quinn signed Illinois’ budget into law. But human services agencies still don’t know how much money they’re getting from the state.

The governor tomorrow will announce how the state will divy-up spending. Quinn has said there’ll be some drastic budget cuts to some programs. Service providers like childcare or substance abuse centers have been waiting to learn how much they’ll be reimbursed by the state. They expect less than last year. But a month into the new fiscal year, they’ve yet to see a final number.

Progress Illinois‘ Angela Caputo is also tracking the uncertainty among social service agencies:

More than three weeks into the new fiscal year, nonprofits are still playing the waiting game. The decision on their funding levels for FY 2010 rests with Gov. Pat Quinn, all thanks to a stopgap budget passed by the General Assembly last week that requires him to free up over $2 billion via cuts that will largely target the human services sector. Folks over in Quinn’s budget office tell us that they’ve been combing through such programs — line by line — ever since.

The budgeting process isn’t as easy as nipping a little here and tucking some there; it’s incredibly complicated. To make matters worse, the governor’s office is still trying to figure out the size of the hole they’re trying to fill. After revising their deficit estimate during the budgeting negotations, Quinn’s aides are treading carefully on the subject. “We don’t do ballparks,” budget office spokeswoman Elizabeth Austin told us.

Federal matching money is a major factor in the decisionmaking process. For instance, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) passed a budget this week protecting programs that fetch federal money, but at a heavy price for the state’s flagship early childhood education. An estimated 30,000 kids will lose preschool services this fall as a result.

The Quinn administration is also struggling with their options for moving money across agencies. For instance, the Ceasefire program currently falls under the corrections budget. Does it then qualify for any of the emergency human services funding? They’re trying to answer dozens of similar questions.

Rather than passing a permanent revenue stream in the form of a tax increase, lawmakers settled for a borrowing plan that will keep the state from shutting down for 5 months–then they’ll have to come up with a new plan to stop a meltdown and cuts even more decimating to Illinois’ safety net than those already proposed.

As SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana President Keith Kelleher said shortly after the final vote:

“Instead of doing what needed to be done to protect vital services, lawmakers passed a dangerous budget that relies on borrowing billions of dollars and deep cuts to keep the state from shutting down. Tens of thousands of jobs and vital services have already been lost and the lives of tens of thousands of Illinois seniors, people with disabilities and children are still in serious jeopardy because our elected officials failed to find a long-term solution. In the weeks ahead, Illinois families are counting on their elected officials to take leadership in this crisis and do the responsible thing by passing a fair revenue plan that protects vital programs from devastating cuts once and for all.”

Springfield’s WAND has more:

Already, vital service providers across the state have been hit hard by budget cuts—cutting care and services for tens of thousands of families and forcing thousands of layoffs.

Members of Illinois Action for Children, who organized Tuesday’s rally, carried pink carnations representing child care providers and early childhood educators across the state now receiving pink slips.

Instead of passing a fair and responsible new revenue plan, lawmakers are now moving towards a budget resolution that relies on devastating cuts and borrowing billions of dollars to stop an immediate shutdown—putting tens of thousands more families at risk of losing the vital human services they rely on.

WAND-TV’s Gordon Graham has the story here: