美国国家公共电台 NPR After 2 Years Without A Budget, Debt And Pain Are Mounting In Illinois

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Illinois has gone nearly two years without a budget. That's because of an epic 1 political fight between the Republican governor and Democrats 2 who control the state legislature. Brian Mackey of Illinois Public Radio reports that the pain of this budget standoff is being felt mostly in places that people don't see.

BRIAN MACKEY, BYLINE 3: They're about to play rummy at Fox Valley Older Adult Services. We're in the town of Sandwich about 90 minutes west of Chicago. Most of the people here are elderly. Some have dementia. Others are sharp as people half their ages.

MARGARET DUFFY: Coming here just kind of saved my life at that time, really.

MACKEY: This is Margaret Duffy.

DUFFY: Margie, call me.

MACKEY: Margie is 71. She says she gets winded walking from here to there and has to carry an oxygen tank. But she feels as good as she has in a while. A few years ago, Margie had been laid off from her job. She was getting depressed 4 until her son got her to start coming to the center.

DUFFY: We laugh, number one. We make jewelry 5. We paint and have a great lunch. And I don't know what I'd do without it.

MACKEY: This is not an idle concern. Fox Valley Older Adult Services has two contracts with Illinois government for the day center and for a home care service. But because of the budget fight, the state has been a major deadbeat. It owes Fox Valley $478,000, about a third of its annual budget. In order to stay afloat, director Cindy Worsley has had to take drastic steps.

CINDY WORSLEY: We're still serving those people. We are still paying the aides. So how do we do that? We have other bills we're not paying.

MACKEY: She's held off a number of creditors 6, and eventually she even stopped paying payroll 7 taxes.

WORSLEY: The IRS won't wait either, but it takes them a little bit longer to get to you. When they do, you have to start figuring out some way to pay it, or you lose it.

MACKEY: This is a story that's repeating itself across Illinois. It's been a sort of stealth government shutdown. There are hundreds of programs that also haven't been paid for homeless teens, AIDS patients and victims of domestic violence. But this aspect of the state budget crisis is happening largely out of public view.

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MACKEY: George Cowper of Springfield is filling his tires after a morning bike ride.

I'm just asking people. I'm wondering if you're willing to say. Have you been affected 8 by the state budget impasse 9 at all?

GEORGE COWPER: Not that I'm aware of, no. I figure they'll get it together sometime.

MACKEY: In fact almost two-thirds of Illinoians say they have not been affected by the stalemate according to a poll earlier this year.

COWPER: I mean I don't because I'm retired 10, and I don't have a state pension.

MACKEY: The lack of public pressure has made it easier for each side to stay in its corner. Governor Bruce Rauner says he hates to see social services going without funding. But he once talked about using the threat of defunding them as a wedge to force Democrats to go along with his agenda to weaken public sector 11 labor 12 unions. So far, Democrats have refused. Most of the state government is still largely functioning through a series of court orders. But Illinois has not been paying many of the nonprofits that provide social services for the state. This has led to a couple of lawsuits 13. Andrea Durbin is head of the Pay Now Illinois Coalition 14, which represents about a hundred social service providers. She says they're being targeted.

ANDREA DURBIN: What they're doing is they're banking 15 on - in the most cynical 16 way, they're banking on the fact that we give a damn and we won't turn our backs on these clients, we won't solve them out into the streets, that we won't lay off our employees until it's impossible for us to do anything else.

MACKEY: Politicians here are under a lot of pressure to end the impasse. Democrats and Republicans have been meeting this week to see if they can bridge their differences, but providers like Fox Valley Older Adult Services are running out of time. For NPR News, I'm Brian Mackey in Springfield, Illinois.