“As the butter chills to form the State Fair butter cow, service providers and organizations across the state are melting from the heat of the state budget gridlock.” That’s the way a group of the state’s human services providers described their situation in a press conference this week. Even without a budget, Gov. Bruce Rauner and the General Assembly have arranged for 82 percent of state government to be funded. The remaining 18 percent includes programs that help the state’s poor and most vulnerable, including services for autism, epilepsy, sexual assault, housing and domestic violence. Actually the State Fair is part of the 18 percent that has no appropriation, but somehow the governor has found a way for that to go ahead. Only human services are now being held hostage for the governor’s turnaround agenda. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2015.
