The state is now $4.2 billion behind in paying its bills, leaving service providers across the state without the resources needed to keep their doors open and continue providing care to those in need.
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.
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