In the final minutes of the legislative session, the General Assembly failed to agree on an income tax increase and passed a budget that includes devastating cuts to human services.

The situation is dire. With no new revenue, children, seniors and people with disabilities face massive cuts to the programs they depend on. As the Associated Press explains:

Top lawmakers said that without new tax dollars, the money available would fall about $7 billion short of covering government expenses in the coming fiscal year. They called it a “lights-on” budget — as in, enough money for state agencies to keep the lights on but nothing more.

They predicted the shortfall would require layoffs of state employees and cuts of up to 50 percent in such programs as home care for the elderly, child-care subsidies and treatment for the developmentally disabled.

“It’s basically a non-budget,” said Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago.

Doug Finke at the State Journal-Register has more:

Under the legislature’s spending plan, hundreds of human service programs would get only 50 percent of the funding that Quinn requested for them. In a news release, Quinn’s office said that means 20,000 seniors will lose home care services, 80,000 low-income mothers will lose childcare services, and foster parents of 9,000 children will lose stipends.

…

“This is the worst budget in the history of Springfield,” said Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, a budget expert and supporter of an income tax hike.

“These cutbacks need to be put on the shoulders of the people in the House who refused to vote (for a tax increase),” he said. “There’s going to be draconian cuts. There’s going to be layoffs.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Budget News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.