Illinois Today

I’m more aware than many of what a budget stalemate in Springfield means to real people.  I’ve been through previous stalemates as the director of a not for profit that strived to provide programs that were largely state funded to people that needed them in a fairly rural part of Illinois.  But none like this.  Sometimes there are no other places families and kids can turn to for those services.  I felt an obligation, all of us involved did, to keep our doors open, make payroll, pay our vendors, do everything it took to go on with counseling, day care, therapy, and the many services our agency provided.  We went on without valid contracts, without guarantee of payment, as if everything was fine.  We kept a brave face while the programs we maintained and the people who used them were used as pawns in some larger game.

There were always programs, contracts, grants that were on the bubble and vulnerable to cuts or elimination.  Often old, seldom studied, and not trendy they were nevertheless part of the fabric of social services in Illinois that we all take for granted. Most of those services are provided by agencies in your community through year to year funding agreements between them and the State of Illinois.  Twelve months at a time.  No promise of more.  July 1-June 30.  That’s just the way it goes.  Uncertainty is part of the deal in private not for profits.  Does that make it easier?  No it doesn’t.

And then you read your agency mail and get a communiqué like this last week on IDHS stationery with Bruce Rauner’s name and his interim department head James T. Dimas at the top:

“Due to significant Fiscal Year 2016 funding shortfalls, the Illinois Department of Human Services is reducing it's Child Care Assistance Program-CCAP (think day care subsidies for low income parents) to ensure sustainability of CCAP despite limited available financial resources projected for FY 16.

You scan the body of the letter for numbers.  It’s a letter about money.  Where are the numbers?  You find them.  Your heart sinks. 

Family size         New                    Redetermination

2            $664                   2,456

3              838                   3,098

4            1,011                  3,734

Jesus Christ where are they getting these numbers?  You go back to the words.

“Effective July 1, IDHS is imposing priority guidelines to all new applicants.  Families whose monthly income does not exceed 50% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines for family size will be eligible for subsidy.”

50% of Federal Poverty Guidelines? Federal Poverty Guidelines (FPG) no longer have any relation to reality.  They have over the past 30 years been used only as a calculator to control cost.  Thus you get multipliers, percentages of an arbitrary figure, sometimes 100% of FPG, sometimes more depending on how much money the government wants to spend, sometimes less.  In this case Illinois picked 50%, saying in effect ‘if you are more than half as poor as the federal government defined poverty years ago, you can no longer receive any help paying for day care for your child.’  Let me help you read those numbers.

If you are a single mother with one child who recently got a job and need someone to care for your young child, you must earn less than $664 a month.  Want to break that down to earnings in a week?  $153.  That’s not even a full time job at minimum wage.  Annual income at this rate?  $7,968.

Family of three, Mom with two kids?  Earn more than $10,056 a year, $838 a month, $194 a week, and you are on your own.  Pay for it yourself.

Family of four?  Do you make more than $12,132 a year, $1,011 a month, $235 a week?  Two kids in day care?  Three?  Doesn’t matter.  Sorry.  You’re screwed.

Imagine you are newly employed.  You shop for day care, visit the center, look around, meet the teachers, and decide you would like your child to also be part of the positive environment that kids typically experience at local day care centers.  Some nice person at the day care reviews your financial situation and says you aren’t eligible for help.  You will have to pay full price.

You look back at them blankly.  “What do you charge?”

The Illinois Valley, where full time care at a licensed day care centers is fairly reasonable, is in the neighborhood of $132 a week for a pre-school age child.  Can you afford that on your own if you fall just outside the guidelines for help?  No.  You can’t possibly pay for day care, pay rent, and buy food.  What do you do?  You look for cheaper care; your neighbors, your Mom, an acquaintance.  And if you don’t find it, you don’t work.  That’s the pressure low income parents are under after the issuance of this letter.

Mind you the letter allows those who were enrolled and receiving assistance prior to July 1 to continue at the same previous levels of assistance, their threshold for assistance three times higher and more.  And the letter does say “All families denied for this reason will be notified once the program returns to its regular policies so new applications can be submitted.”  That implies the program will return to its regular policies.  Someday.  Perhaps.  It’s all up to Governor Rauner and James T. Dimas, whoever he is.

It says nothing of the fact that your day care center will not be paid for the care they may extend under these reduced rates until there is a budget.  That the effect of 50% Federal Poverty Guidelines virtually assures no new enrollments is not acknowledged.  That payments for services past June 30, 2015 are frozen is not mentioned.  That you and the low income families you strive to help are left out in the cold is not contained in the letter.

Without a state budget Illinois has found a way to continue to pay it’s state employees.  We agreed at some level to a deal that allows schools to start on time.  But low income families seeking help finding quality day care for their children?  Sorry.  We can’t help them.  That’s Illinois today.  Thought you ought to know.