CARBONDALE - The time for lawmakers to pass a budget that will restore 50 percent cuts to human services came and went when Illinois' 2009 fiscal year ended at midnight Wednesday. Now, agencies throughout the region are looking for ways to cope as they cut jobs and services to fit the new budget.

At the H Group in West Frankfort, administrators cut 33 jobs and 12 employees took pay cuts and demotions, said John Markley, executive director.

"If any legislator was looking for the blood on the sidewalk so to speak, it's today (Wednesday)," Markley said. "If legislators are wondering if it's really a crisis or not they can come and sit in our office and watch us tell our clients we can't serve them; watch us have to tell our staff there is no need for their service because they aren't funded by the sate anymore."

Markley estimated the H Group, which provides mental health and addiction services in Williamson and Franklin Counties, will serve 1,000 fewer people this year than the 7,000 served last year.

"As far as referrals for indigents and the working poor, there are very few options," he said. "The insensitivity of the Legislature to how this affects the most vulnerable of our population is outrageous. And nobody is accountable for it."

At Fellowship House in Anna, CEO Mickey Finch said the cuts mean her agency's budget will shrink from $1.7 million to $475,000 this year. Fellowship House provides 24-hour, seven-day-a-week residential rehabilitation, detoxification and prevention services to state-verified drug addicts.

"It's scary; we've been hurt to the point we are crippled," said Finch. "Basically, we can do business for a few more months then we'll close."

Finch said she has already cut seven jobs at Fellowship House and cut the number of patient beds from 40 to 20. She said the agency can make it until the end of the calendar year before shutting down.

Lisa Tolbert, executive director of Delta Center in Cairo, said state cuts total $800,000, or about one-third of the agency's budget. So far, the agency has cut 10 jobs.

The Delta Center offers mental health, prevention and youth services to about 1,000 people annually and that number has thinned with Monday's cancellation of several services, Tolbert said.

"Between 70 to 100 individuals, they will discontinue receiving substance abuse service from us and we are not taking in new referrals," she said. "We are going to do a 30-day transition period (before discontinuing substance abuse services) and refer them to other providers. But that's next to impossible as every other provider got the same cuts we did."

Karen Freitag, of Southern Illinois Social Services said 20 employees at her agency have been given their two-week notice of employment termination.

"We don't have the reserves to go into the fiscal year and carry that with the idea that the state might restore funding," she said, before adding that the costs of the cuts will reverberate through Illinois. "Substance abuse services are cut drastically. People will end up in court services and jails; that's more expensive than treatment. And it's going to cost the state more in the mental health area where they (patients) could end up in hospitals and that's more costly too."

Freitag added, "It's really poor decision-making in my opinion; I just don't understand it. It makes no sense."

Finch, Markley and Tolbert agreed that any savings the state might realize through the cuts will be short lived as mental health patients, addicts and at-risk youths find their way to hospitals, courtrooms and jails.

"There are a ton of stats out there that show the cost of treating someone in a community behavioral health care setting versus a state operated hospital or incarceration in the Department of Corrections is about one-fourth of the cost," Tolbert said. "This is going to have just an impossible impact on this whole state."

blackwell.thomas@thesouthern.com

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