Needing Funding to Provide Funding

Published July 15, 2009 @ 09:42AM PT

Needing Funding to Provide Funding in Illinois

This was going to be an update on my State Budget Cut Watch in this week's news potpourri, but then I got going with it and it got longer and longer and--

Illinois just made some pretty severe cuts.

In fact, he [Dale Morrissey CEO of Developmental Services Center] added, in three decades on the job he's never seen a state budget mess have this severe an effect on social-service funding.

"I've never seen it this bad and I've never seen it go this far," he said.

Jobs and programs being cut by one or the other of the two local agencies allow parents of developmentally disabled clients to leave their homes and earn a living. They keep people with disabilities in homes and employed. They help the homeless and keep those with mental health issues out of emergency rooms and police squad cars.

So here's the thing--without the services, a number of people are no longer able to work or avoid crisis situations. Because they are no longer working, they are no longer paying taxes. Because they are no longer paying taxes, they are no longer contributing to the funding that would provide them with the services to enable them work, and pay taxes, and support themselves. Without the services, people are more likely to enter crisis situations and use significantly more costly services such as emergency housing assistance and hospital emergency care.

So we end up with people who have no jobs, people who are in costly crisis situations, and because of these two things even less chance of economic recovery (not to mention anything resembling quality of life).

In order to say anything conclusive of the financial and health and safety impact a real analysis would have to be undertaken, but the potential for a vicious cycle that quickly becomes very hard to break is pretty clear.

Has such an analysis happened? Or are these types of decisions merely panic reactions?

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Comments (2)

I don't think people are oblivious to those kind of calculations. Rather, I think that two things go on:

1) It takes time for the "secondary effects" to start costing money, but we have a budget crisis NOW. So cut programs now to save money, and worry about the secondary fallout "later".

2) Individual departments may be tasked with cutting, say, 10% from their budget. When looking at where to cut, they won't look for where it will have the least effect on the end user, but rather where it will have the least effect on their own department. So if the particular cuts they make make it worse on the end user, but "transfer" the secondary cost to the user and ANOTHER DEPARTMENT'S BOTTOM LINE, then the obvious choice is to transfer that cost elsewhere.

Joe

Posted by Joe Sark on 07/15/2009 @ 11:15AM PT
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My states budget issues go back a very long time. They needed to raise income taxes a LONG time ago and haven't. They create too many programs without being able to fund them- virtually all of our kids get SCHIP, but we can't pay doctors for medicaid. We have some schools that can afford heated pools and others that can't afford air conditioning. Really- it's borderline idiotic.

We will spend money SOMEWHERE, we can either spend that money on preventing crisies or spend it on putting out fires.

Posted by Erin Monk on 07/15/2009 @ 12:08PM PT
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Dora is committed to improving quality of life for individuals on the autistic spectrum--including herself! She is Co-director of the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education and a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Board of Directors.