April 27--Weeks after Gov. Bruce Rauner and lawmakers in Springfield struck a deal to cut $300 million in spending across much of state government, the effects of that deal are starting to take hold.
As many as 3,000 college students will lose out on grants for tuition and fees this school year. Chicagoans with sickle cell anemia could lose access to an emergency pain treatment center. And doctors and pharmacies across the state are bracing for deep reductions in Medicaid reimbursement rates.
The cuts are part of a larger effort to close a $1.6 billion shortfall in this year's budget, which was passed without enough money to keep funding for programs stable through an entire budget year.
The deal struck by Rauner and lawmakers calls for a 2.25 percent reduction in spending across much of state government. But the effects could be felt unevenly since the cuts are being crammed into the remaining months of the budget year, which ends June 30.
At the Department of Human Services, for example, most programs will continue to provide services because money can be moved around to cover the cuts. But for seven programs within the department, such maneuvers aren't possible and spending on services will be slashed by $1.1 million, department spokeswoman Veronica Vera said. Among those is a domestic violence shelter program that will lose $419,300 and a program for expectant parents that will lose $225,900.
At the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, grant distributors had anticipated the cuts and held back money that would otherwise have been offered to needy students. As a result, the $8.4 million slashed from the program's budget won't force any students to pay back money that was already awarded for this school year, spokeswoman Lynne Baker said.
Still, the cuts mean that thousands of students who might have been awarded a grant will be deprived of money to help pay their college tuition and fees, Baker said.
Grants awarded through the program average about $3,500 for students attending public universities and $3,900 for students attending private schools. The average family income of a grant recipient who is a dependent student is about $30,000 a year, and the average income of a grant recipient who is an independent student is about $16,000 a year, Baker said.
"During the gubernatorial transition, we were unsure at the beginning about whether we would need to hold back our funds, so we were very conservative in our forecasting," Baker said. "One of the most difficult things that can ever happen is that you release all those funds and then you have to take money away from students. You don't ever want to have to do that."
A sudden cutoff of services is something Dr. Victor Gordeuk hopes to avoid as his sickle cell center at the University of Illinois Hospital Health Sciences System faces a $500,000 funding cut.
Sickle cell disease is a genetic blood disorder that among other things causes patients to have episodes of severe pain throughout their bodies. The condition is a rare disorder that is mainly diagnosed in African-Americans, Gordeuk said.
The sickle cell center operates an acute care facility where patients can go to get emergency pain treatment and avoid long waits in the emergency room. Last fiscal year, the center treated 820 people with the disease, Gordeuk said. Without state funding, the center might have to interrupt patient care.
"Patients with sickle cell disease require pain medication intravenously," he said. "We have a dedicated care center to treat these episodes. If funding is removed, it will be very hard for us to continue those services."
Having the center is not only convenient for patients, who are treated within 30 minutes to an hour, Gordeuk said. It also frees space in the emergency room so doctors and nurses there can focus on other patients. Gordeuk said his patients are planning to lobby to have their funding restored.
"They are pretty active and contacting representatives and planning a day sometime in May when they will travel to Springfield and meet the legislators," he said. "It's cool that our patients have taken it upon themselves to be self-starters and try to do something about this."
Others are still waiting to find out what the cuts will mean for their programs.
Jeri Linas, the executive director of Chicago's Teen Living Programs, said she is expecting her organization to face cuts but hasn't yet learned just how much.
With locations in Bronzeville and Washington Park, Teen Living provides housing and support services for homeless youths in Chicago. The agency gets about $275,000 from the state, some of which pays for staff members who help young at-risk clients find jobs, enroll in school and get subsidized housing.
"This is a very vulnerable population and it's an invisible population," Linas said. "The average person, when they think of homelessness ... they don't think about a 16, 17 or 18-year old who literally has nowhere to go."
She worries that any cuts could have an even bigger effect when lost federal matching dollars are taken into account.
"The double whammy is, some of us who have contracts utilize funding from the state as a match for federal funding," Linas said. "So when you cut a program's budget ... the risk of an agency closing its doors is very real."
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