Families feel budget impasse
By KEVIN P. CRAVER - kcraver@nwherald.com
Carrie Taylor took her 5-year-old foster son to McHenry County Youth Service Bureau on Tuesday for his regular therapy.
But there’s nothing regular about it anymore, courtesy of the state budget impasse. It was his last with his therapist, whose position was eliminated.
The new state fiscal year began Wednesday with a budget that Gov. Pat Quinn says falls $9.2 billion short and means deep cuts in Illinois social services.
Quinn’s proposed solution – a 50 percent increase in the state income tax from 3 to 4.5 percent – has fallen flat with the General Assembly.
Taylor is waiting to hear whether her son’s case will be important enough to pass on to another Youth Service Bureau therapist, or whether she must try to find another agency. She also worries about her adopted child who also relies on the bureau’s services.
Taylor, a Marengo resident who has adopted three children and is in the process of adopting the fourth, said she was disgusted with what was going on in Springfield.
“I believe this is a scare tactic, and it’s reprehensible to be doing it on the backs of these children,” Taylor said. “There are other areas of government to be cut before social services are even looked at. It bothers me that the state is doing this to the most vulnerable in our society.”
This marks the third straight year that the Democratic-dominated General Assembly lurched into a new fiscal year without a solid spending plan, again leaving state employees and service agencies wondering whether they will get paid. Lawmakers adjourned Tuesday evening from their second special session ordered by Quinn to get a tax increase passed.
Quinn told both houses earlier in the day that he would veto any incomplete budget, a threat he made good on Wednesday.
He also told lawmakers that he was prepared to work them through the summer until a budget is passed to his satisfaction.
House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, both Democrats from Chicago, plan to call legislators back into special session July 14. There is not enough support in the House for a tax hike without meaningful cuts and budget reform – it fell 18 votes shy of the 60 votes needed in the spring session. Seventy-one votes are required in overtime.
Until the situation is resolved, county service agencies that rely on state funding are cutting back. They already had been cutting back in anticipation of a gutting of their funding, but the start of a new fiscal year without a budget has forced tougher decisions.
Pioneer Center for Human Services President and CEO Lorraine Kopczynski said she now is forced to make deeper cuts to overcome a shortfall of at least $1.6 million of lost state funding. She estimated last week that Pioneer Center, which serves people with mental and developmental disabilities, could end up turning away one-sixth of its 1,800 clients.
“It is the first day of the doomsday budget,” Kopczynski said. “Yes, we have no money coming in; yes, we are going to make cuts; and yes, clients will be losing services. And it’s very, very sad.”
Woodstock resident Gus Philpott is worried about the availability of psychiatric services that his 20-year-old stepson gets through Family Alliance and Community Mental Health Center. His stepson has been a client for at least six years. The Family Alliance psychiatrist not only prescribes his stepson’s medications, Philpott said, but also monitors his stepson’s compliance with the regimen and watches for side effects.
“If they can’t see him and he’s out of meds, it’s a terrible problem,” Philpott said.
