A standing-room only crowd filled the hearing chambers at the Bilandic Building, 160 N. LaSalle St., as the Illinois Senate Appropriations Human Services Committee met to discuss Gov. Bruce Rauner's proposed budget cuts.
Acting Human Services Secretary Gregory Bassi testified about the importance of the cuts, and faced grilling from some committee members, while service providers and their clients urged the committee to keep funding in place. The cuts, as proposed by Rauner, would slash just over $4 billion from the state budget. About $500 million would be cut from the human services budget, affecting areas such as housing, childcare and mental health services, among others.
Bassi acknowledged that "difficult decisions were made" surrounding the budget, but argued that those decisions were necessary, given the precarious state of Illinois' finances. But some senators felt that the state had already trimmed all the fat it could.
State Sen. Donne Trotter implied that Rauner's administration was making a straw man argument in focusing its public discourse around the budget. He reminded Bassi that most programs were facing finance problems already, and these new cuts would only exacerbate difficulties clients had in accessing them.
"Let's not get distracted by the budget. We have to deal with reality. What are [Rauner's] plans for making lives better?" Trotter asked.
Committee Chair Heather Steans noted that over 60,000 people would be affected by cuts to supportive housing. "That's a mid-size town—are these people going to evaporate? The mission doesn't change … Where are they going to end up? They're going to end up on the streets, in jails, and in emergency rooms."
But Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine, reminded the gathering that the state's problems were largely the result of mismanagement by previous administrations. In answering discussion about new revenue streams, he said, "We had higher tax rates before, and this [funding] area still suffers."
Ivelisha Woods, a 22-year-old client of the Harmony Village social service organization, testified about what's at stake for her should the cuts go through. She has been unstably housed since she was 12, when her mother died. She has three daughters—ages 7, 4 and 9 months—and described her efforts to work, get an education and raise her children—all the while worrying about how long they'll be able to stay in one place. She's currently living in a Harmony Village facility.
Woods told Windy City Times that she sent her oldest daughter to live with an aunt since she'd be old enough to be aware of what was going on around them, and hoped that circumstances allow for her daughter to come back to her.
"Please don't cut the funding," was the message Woods had for legislators. "[These programs] have helped me since I was 15-years-old. Give us the chance to keep trying."
Before the hearing, Mark Ishuag, CEO of Thresholds, called the cuts "devastating to community health—not just to Thresholds, but all of our partners."
He added that most of the cuts would likely not even save money in both the short- and long-run: "[Persons in need] will get services when they need them—they'll get services from police, emergency rooms, hospitals and nursing homes. All of those are more expensive than the programs they want to cut."
It's a lesson the state learned the hard way in both 2009 and 2011, when the state lopped off $100 million from human services spending, Ishaug noted.
"They ended up spending about $120 million to make up for that $100 million savings. While some of these services are for treatment, they also serve as prevention—prevention for costly alternatives."
Ivelisha Woods holds her daughter, Taliyah, shortly before testifying on the impact of Rauner Budget Cuts By Matt Simonette.JPG
