Yesterday, the House passed and sent to the Senate a set of Supplemental Appropriation bills which provide about $1.6 billion to fix problems in the FY15 state budget which jeopardized services such as childcare, elementary and secondary ed, mental health, court reporters and Department of Corrections funding. 80% ($1.35 billion) of this was achieved with ‘sweeps’ of funds from a number of Special Funds of the state, and 20% was done with modest cuts across most departments.
In addition to funding childcare services, the supplemental provides funding for Corrections operations, court reporters, the medical cannabis program, as well as the Departments of Juvenile Justice, Natural Resources, Human Rights, Historic Preservation, Revenue and Prisoner Review Board which allows them to continue to operate this fiscal year.
The cuts will be 2.25% across the board for most programs, but in order to protect the most vulnerable members of the community, mental health, autism grants and long term care for persons with developmental disabilities will be held harmless.
To protect poorer school districts, a special $97million lump sum appropriation was provided to the Illinois State Board of Education to assist school districts in a “financial watch” or “financial early warning” situation.
The Governor had originally requested broad authority to move large sums of money between and with departments and agencies. The House wanted much stricter control and accountability for how funds were used and only allows 4% transferability among operational lines within the same agency (up from statutory 2%).
You can see the two pieces of legislation which together make up the supplemental HB 317 and 318 here:
http://ilga.gov/legislation/99/HB/PDF/09900HB0317eng.pdf and here:
http://ilga.gov/legislation/99/HB/PDF/09900HB0318eng.pdf
Both the House and Senate also continue to request a list of what programs and grants that the Governor has deemed to be “non-essential” pursuant to his Executive Order, and to know what funds are not being spent. So far, neither any of the Department Heads nor the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget has been able or willing to provide such these lists. The House and the Senate both want to see these lists. We are aware of organizations such as Ceasefire who have been performing work in the community for months that may now face not only prospective but also retrospective cancellations of their agreements with the State and not