Area Social Services Brace for Springfield Budget Cuts

As he hears the deafening cries for budget cuts coming from Springfield, Jerry Gulley wonders what is next for his organization that is already walking a financial tightrope.

While elected officials try to come to grips with the challenges facing the state, social service agencies can only bide their time wondering about the final results.

As executive director of Shore Community Services (SCS), Gulley oversees an organization that provides community-based programs for adults and children with developmental disabilities. The Evanston-based agency serves several municipalities including Skokie.

While the financial challenges facing social services agencies are daunting, these past few weeks have been especially tough for Gulley and affiliated organizations. 

SCS receives $3.8 million from the state--about 70 percent of its total budget. However, under Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget, it faces a 6 percent cut that may lead to the elimination of two of its programs that provide assistance to families.

Gulley has been down this road before with threats of draconian budget cuts and at this point, he mixes disenchantment with political realism in assessing the situation.

“It happens year after year,” Gulley said.  “The numbers are bad this time, but we have been through these cycles many times. You just learn to be extremely resourceful.

"Government has a view of, there is no mandate to provide. So in other words, whenever we help community services we are doing it because we want to, not because we have to.  You can see where that attitude comes in when times get tough,” he added.

Gulley said there have been severe reductions in the past and sometimes a compromise is achieved to limit the fallout from the cuts. However, the situation rarely improves for agencies such as his.

Moreover, money he thought was coming in the state’s capital bill to make improvements on the agency's building has been stalled as the Wirtz family challenges in court the constitutionality of the $31 billion measure. 

So a frustrating time only gets worse, but Gulley acknowledges this is a path he has taken before.

“Sometimes a less harmful compromise is found but rarely is there a solution that helps the situation tremendously,” he said. “It is always a Band-Aid, but we never see gains in the amount of significant people being helped.  It is always underfunded.”  

While SCS and other social service agencies deal with the budget realities, state Reps. Lou Lang and Daniel Biss are in Springfield as the budget process unfolds with the responsibility of looking at the entire picture and not just through a narrowly focused beam. 

The two Democratic legislators from Skokie realize that even with the income tax hike passed earlier this year, there is still a massive deficit for lawmakers to tackle as the state tries to dig out of a huge financial hole in a fragile economy.

“We are not interested in spending more; we are interested in spending less,” Lang said. “We don’t want to hurt people but we have a fiscal reality and we have to pull back.”

Lang agreed with Quinn’s vision that borrowing almost $9 billion was the way to go right now and refinancing the state's debt would save money in the long run.  “It is a prudent and sound fiscal plan to lower the amount of interest we owe and pay back vendors,” he said.

Besides social services, another area where Quinn has talked about cutting the budget is in the area of education, or at least cutting down on the numbers of school districts and eliminating some high-paying administrative positions.

Biss, a freshman lawmaker, is on the Appropriations Committee and its Elementary and Secondary Education Subcommittee.  He is cautious about what will be accomplished in the long run.

“We’ve got scarce dollars and everyone agrees we need to put as much as we can [toward] helping kids,” Biss said.  “But you want to make sure what you are doing [that]  you are not cutting some title and creating another administrator somewhere else.

"In the past, we have engaged in consolidation efforts that get a lot of attention at the beginning but there is not a lot of follow-through to make sure there has been actual savings,” he added.