The scheduled end of the current Illinois General Assembly session is May 31. Unless your state legislators and Governor Rauner hear from you, this will be the second year in a row that the session ends without passing a budget that has adequate revenue to fund state priorities and make smart investments, including creating affordable housing and ending homelessness.
Earlier this month, the General Assembly missed a great opportunity to increase revenue and make the tax system fairer when the House let the deadline pass to vote on a resolution allowing voters to decide if the Illinois Constitution should be amended to allow for an income tax where those with lower incomes pay lower rates and those with higher incomes pay higher rates. Governor Rauner’s opposition to the Fair Tax was a key factor in there being no vote.
Despite this setback, there has been some progress made on the budget, as on May 12 the General Assembly passed a “stopgap” bill with limited, emergency funding for human services, including programs to address homelessness, affordable housing and foreclosure prevention. The bill passed with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. However, at the time of sending this alert out it is unclear what Governor Rauner intends to do with bill. We hope that he signs it into law, just as he did an earlier stopgap funding bill for higher education. However, the stopgap bill does nothing to increase revenue or create a comprehensive budget for this year or next. Fiscal year 2017 starts on July 1, 2016.
Our understanding is that a bipartisan group of legislators is currently working on a proposal to raise revenue, but it’s unclear whether the package will include enough revenue to avoid further cuts to human service programs and other important priorities. We also don’t know whether an agreement to raise revenue will be derailed by efforts to pass elements of Governor Rauner’s “Turnaround Agenda” and/or other initiatives that are unrelated to the state budget.
We’ve been documenting the impact of the state budget impasse since last fall when 90% of state-funded homeless services providers told us they would be forced to reduce or eliminate services. In addition to the human cost of increased homelessness caused by the state budget impasse, Illinois is losing jobs, economic investment and putting federal matching funds at risk.
It’s wrong to allow people to become homeless due to partisan political battles. Please let your legislators and Governor Rauner know you agree with us on this.
Click here to contact your state legislators and Governor Rauner. Urge them to support a state budget that has enough revenue to make further cuts to human service programs unnecessary and not make passage of a responsible state budget contingent on any issues unrelated to the budget.