Wednesday, Jun. 17, 2009

Disabled adults, kids face service cuts, director warns

Community Link in Breese will be left without funding and more than 400 developmentally disabled adults and children will be left without the organization's services if the state cuts funding, its director said Wednesday.

"If these cuts happen, we will be without funding in two weeks," said John Foppe, director of Community Link. "This is real life stuff that these politicians are screwing with. Today I had to tell a group of my clients that they could lose their services and one of them went into a seizure he was so upset."

The cuts would go into effect on July 1 and amount to about $250,000 for the organization, Foppe said.

"It's an underfunded system and now they want to cut it more," Foppe said. "I don't know how they could cut any more unless they cut through bone because it's already cut to the bone. I have 150 employees who are asking questions and wondering what is going to happen to them."

Community Link was in the news last year when it announced it had to close one of its six group homes for developmentally disabled adults because the state failed to pay $1.4 million worth of invoices. The organization also provides adult day training in Fairview Heights and Breese, offers a respite program for caregivers of developmentally disabled individuals and runs a Head Start and early development program for developmentally disabled infants and children.

Illinois government faces its worst budget deficit in history -- at least $11.6 billion.

Quinn proposed closing that gap with a combination of spending cuts, budget maneuvers and tax increases. Lawmakers wouldn't agree to most of his ideas and instead passed a budget that didn't include enough money to cover costs, leaving it to him to decide where to cut spending.

Lawmakers described it as a "lights-on" budget -- meaning it would provide enough money for agencies to keep the lights on but nothing more. They said Quinn would have to cut spending by roughly $7 billion.

Foppe warned that if the service cuts are made as Quinn predicts the state would most likely experience as "cascade failure in human services."

"When they start messing with this stuff it's a ripple effect," Foppe said. "Everything affects everything else and the system can't handle it. Other services will become overloaded and will fail."

On Wednesday Quinn said a state budget without the tax increase would cut more than 50 percent of social service funding. The Democrat says that would leave more than 51,000 Illinois senior citizens who receive aid through the Community Care Program without care.

The state currently owed the organization $1.5 million in back invoices since January, Foppe said.

"And to add insult to injury, I got a collection notice from the State of Illinois for $22.06 for an overpayment they made," Foppe said. "They sent it to a collection agency and now they are paying some law firm to collect from us when they owe us $1.5 million. The state is broken and I lay the responsibility squarely at the feet of the legislature and the Illinois Department of Human Services. They say they are doing the best they can, but it's a far cry from 'yes, we can.'"

At 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Quinn is scheduled to visit LINC Inc. at 120 E. A St. in Belleville to promote the tax increase. LINC, an acronym for Living Independently Now Center, helps people with disabilities live independently.