Help stop cuts to vital community services!
Tell your legislators and the governor to stop playing politics with people’s lives!

Click here to sign an online petition to urge the governor and legislators to "Save Our Services!

On May 31, 2009, the Illinois General Assembly passed a partial budget which created a $9.2 billion funding gap in an attempt to balance the budget on the backs of those least able to bear that burden - by forcing drastic cuts to fundamental state services. These cuts affect REAL PEOPLE – hundreds of thousands of people who are the most frail, sick and impoverished in the state. 

The toll of misery for individuals who would lose these services is unimaginable. This budget nightmare soon will become real for children and families throughout Illinois, with many vital services scheduled for elimination or to be slashed by 50% to 75%. This includes a wide range of early childhood services, foster care, services for frail and homebound elders, substance abuse treatment, and preventative community public health services, rape crisis centers and services for battered women - and more than
500,000 individuals who receive mental health and developmental disability services!
Click here to see a breakdown of the proposed cuts to community services.


We need YOUR HELP NOW!

Tell your legislators and the governor to stop playing politics with people’s lives!

• Click here for a letter template to fill out and then fax, e-mail or mail to your representative and senator.
• Click here for contact information for representatives and senators in Sangamon, Menard, Logan, Mason, Scott and Morgan counties.
• Click here to find out who is your representative or senator.
• Click here to contact Governor Quinn and ask him to veto a budget that doesn’t support the people of Illinois!
• Click here to contact the House and Senate Majority and Minority Leaders (choose leader and then click on their Contact tab) and tell them that absolutely vital services have been cut and it is not acceptable to the people of Illinois!

Severe cuts in the state’s human services budget will have serious adverse consequences for every individual in Illinois as it impacts local governments, public safety agencies, hospitals, the courts and corrections. Over the long term, the cuts could prove more costly than the programs that are lost.

• Without juvenile intervention services, for example, youth will end up in the adult prison system.
• Disabled seniors who lose in-home aides will end up in nursing homes.
• Developmentally disabled individuals will lose their jobs and need further support from tax payers. 
• Those being treated for mental illness may end up without medication and become so sick they require hospitalization or die!
• Mentally ill individuals may lose their housing and become homeless.

In addition, a budget that cuts human services and other vital programs by 50% to 100% will result in significant job losses, perhaps as high as several hundred thousand jobs across Illinois.