CARBONDALE - While a state budget has not been passed, many regional agencies depending on the funds are in limbo - awaiting devastating cuts or an allotment equal to last year's, depending on which prognostication turns out correct.

And while the state's lawmakers are staring down the end of the fiscal year and the beginning of a new one July 1, many agency chiefs are wondering how to prepare for cuts, which some in Springfield have said could be as much as 50 percent.

At the Jackson County Health Department, Executive Director Miriam Link-Mullison said Monday that state funding accounts for about $1.9 million of her agency's $3.7 million budget. Link-Mullison called a 50 percent cut "devastating" and said planning for the coming fiscal year has been hindered by not knowing how much state funding the agency might see.

"We are getting very mixed information,"she said. "So we don't have a (spending) plan in place because we don't know what's going to get cut."

Link Mullison added: "And this is not coming at a time when we are flush with money."

Cathy McClanahan, executive director of the Women's Center in Carbondale, said her agency serves more than "1,000 survivors of domestic and sexual violence per year." A 50 percent cut in state funds would take a 24 percent chunk out of the Women's Center budget, said McClanahan.

With that in mind, she said, she is planning accordingly.

"Everything is still pretty much up in the air but we are preparing for up to 50 percent cut," she said.

McClanahan said that loss of state funding could lead to a loss in federal funding received through grants which require the agency to match the federal government's contribution.

John Markley, the CEO of the H Group, which provides addiction and mental health services in Southern Illinois, said a 50 percent cut would mean he'd have to lay off about 80 of his 300 employees.

"It would impact every area of service and support that we provide," he said, before adding that H Group serves about 9,000 people a year. "With that kind of a cut there would be no discriminating; everyone would be affected."

Markley said the loss of funding could end up costing municipalities and the state more in the future.

"For every dollar invested in prevention services that we offer it saves $10 in treatment and for every dollar invested in addiction it's $7 saved," he said. "Many of these things we are talking about, people don't realize that the residual effect is a child welfare system that will be overloaded, a court system that is overloaded, a jail system that will be overloaded and primary care systems and hospital emergency rooms overloaded."

blackwell.thomas@thesouthern.com

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