WBEZ | budget cuts

Chicago community groups protest child care cuts

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:07:00 -0500

At a demonstration against child care cuts in Pilsen Tuesday, there were more kids than adults. The kids yelled “we need childcare” and tried to stay still while adults representing Chicago community groups spoke out in favor of restoring Illinois’ early childhood programs to previous funding levels.

The state of Illinois cut $25 million from early childhood education grants in FY2013, and also raised co-pays, and lowered eligibility requirements for subsidized child care services.

“I went from paying around $100 a month, to paying now $200 a month,” said Lorraine Bahena, who has a 4-year-old in a nearby preschool. “I actually have the means to pay, thank god, but if not for that I would have had to have pulled my daughter out.”

Another parent, Maria Zuno, said she’s taken a pay cut so that her kids remain eligible.

“I can’t make too much money because then they get kicked out,” Zuno said. “And I can’t make too little because then I can’t make ends meet.”

Organizers representing nine community groups in Chicago, mostly childcare and early education providers, said 100 people will travel to Springfield to attend a special hearing of the House Appropriations Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education Wednesday. That committee is responsible for the $25 million in cuts to Early Childhood Block Grants meant to support Illinois preschool programs. That budget has been slashed by $80 million over four years.

Committee Chairman Rep. Will Davis (D-30), who set up the hearing with advocates, nonetheless says it will be a challenge to keep next year’s Block Grant funding at this year’s levels.

“It’s not a matter of opposition,” he said. “It’s just resources. That committee will have to make some very tough decisions as to how they spend those resources.”

Since 2009, the number of kids in Illinois’ early childhood programs has dropped by an estimated 22,000 due to budget cuts.

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s proposed budget for 2014 wouldn’t restore early childhood funding to previous levels, but it would hold the line on early childhood programs.

“The budget cuts are largely driven by the pension problems,” said Illinois Assistant Budget Director Abdon Pallasch. “It’s a real fight to maintain funding for these programs and that’s what the governor’s office is trying to do.”

Lewis Wallace is a Pritzker Journalism Fellow at WBEZ. Follow him @lewispants

Flight delays pile up Monday after FAA budget cuts

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:47:00 -0500

NEW YORK — It was a tough start to the week for many air travelers. Flight delays piled up all along the East Coast Monday as thousands of air traffic controllers were forced to take an unpaid day off because of federal budget cuts.

Some flights into New York, Baltimore and Washington were delayed by more than two hours as the Federal Aviation Administration kept planes on the ground because there weren't enough controllers to monitor busy air corridors.

One out of every five flights at New York's LaGuardia International scheduled to take off before noon on Monday was delayed 15 minutes or more, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. Last Monday morning, just 2 percent of LaGuardia's flights were delayed. The situation was similar at Washington's Reagan National Airport, in Newark, N.J. and in Philadelphia.

Some flights were late by two hours or more.

For instance, the 8 a.m. US Airways shuttle from Washington to New York pushed back from the gate six minutes early but didn't take off until 9:58 a.m. The plane landed at 10:48 a.m. — more than two and a half hours late.

If travelers instead took Amtrak's 8 a.m. Acela Express train from Washington, they arrived in New York at 10:42 a.m. — 4 minutes early.

The furloughs are part of mandatory budget cuts that kicked in on March 1 after Democrats and Republicans missed a deadline to agree on a long-term deficit reduction plan.

FAA officials have said they have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 agency employees, including nearly 15,000 air traffic controllers. Each employee will lose one day of work every other week. The FAA has said that planes will have to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty.

Critics have said the FAA could reduce its budget in other spots that wouldn't delay travelers.

Monday is typically one of the busiest days at airports with many business travelers setting out for a week on the road. The FAA's controller cuts — a 10 percent reduction of its staff — went into effect Sunday but the full force wasn't felt until Monday morning.

Some travel groups have warned that the disruptions could hurt the economy.

"If these disruptions unfold as predicted, business travelers will stay home, severely impacting not only the travel industry but the economy overall," the Global Business Travel Association warned the head of the FAA, Michael P. Huerta, in a letter Friday.

Deborah Seymour was one of the first fliers to face the headaches.

She was supposed to fly from Los Angles to Tucson, Ariz., Sunday night. First her 9:55 p.m. flight was delayed four hours. Then at 2 a.m., Southwest Airlines canceled it.

"It's pretty discouraging that Congress can't get it together and now it's reached the point that we can't get on an airplane and fly," Seymour said.

One thing working in fliers' favor Monday was relatively good weather at most of the country's major airports. A few wind gusts in New York added to some delays, but generally there were clear skies and no major storms.

Delta Air Lines said it was "disappointed" in the furloughs and warned travelers Monday to expect delays in the following cities: New York, Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Many flights heading to Florida were seeing delays of up to an hour.

Raymond Adams, president of the air traffic controllers union at New Jersey's Newark airport, said on Twitter than a few flights out of Newark to the south got sent back to Newark because the Washington area air traffic control system was overwhelmed.

The FAA has also furloughed other critical employees including airline and airport safety inspectors.

The country's airlines and some lawmakers have suggested the White House is causing misery for fliers to put pressure on Republicans in Congress to rescind the cuts. They say the FAA is ignoring other ways to cut its $16 billion budget. Two airline trade associations and the nation's largest pilots union filed a lawsuit Friday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals to halt the furloughs. No hearing date has been set.

In a letter to the FAA Friday, Delta's general counsel Ben Hirst asked the agency to reconsider the furloughs, saying it could make the cuts elsewhere and could transfer funds from "non-safety activities" to support the FAA's "core mission of efficiently managing the nation's airspace."

With reports from Joan Lowy in Washington and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles.

Sequester would cut funding for environment and energy

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:00:00 -0600

A White House report detailing the impacts of cuts scheduled to take effect March 1 if Congress does not avert the sequester (part of the "fiscal cliff") named environmental funding among the hardest hit in Illinois:

“Illinois would lose about $6.4 million in environmental funding to ensure clean water and air quality, as well as prevent pollution from pesticides and hazardous waste. In addition, Illinois could lose another $974,000 in grants for fish and wildlife protection.”

Illinois EPA declined to comment on the looming budget reductions.

Congress appears unlikely to strike deal that would avoid the mandatory spending cuts totaling $85 billion, to say nothing of the second, albeit much smaller, cuts scheduled for March 27. The cuts are meant to help close a $4 trillion budget deficit.

While the belt-tightening measures on track to begin Friday amount in aggregate to roughly 2.5 percent of all federal spending, a report released Tuesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that the sequester will slash more than twice that proportion (5.1 percent) from discretionary non-military programs. (Defense programs actually have it worse, looking at about 7.7 percent cutbacks.)

Nationwide environmental programs will take a big hit. The National Science Foundation will issue almost 1,000 fewer research grants, and several thousand research personnel could lose their jobs as a result of cuts to The National Institutes of Health. Many national parks will face partial or full closures.

The sequester would slow down oil and gas permitting, due to cutbacks at the Department of the Interior and other agencies with a hand in that process. Permitting for solar and wind power plants on federal lands could also slow down.

The cuts would affect energy efficiency, too, perhaps counting 1,200 home weatherization professionals among those laid off as a result of the sequester.

Cuts at the Field Museum could 'diminish' its international reputation

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:41:00 -0600

Updated: 5 p.m.

Chicago’s Field Museum is proposing a significant reduction in its re-operating budget, citing a hefty debt load. That could mean higher prices for patrons.

The museum hopes to reduce costs by $5 million and organize its scientific research wing, from academic departments like anthropology and zoology to more generic fields of study such as "museum exhibitions."

Field President and Chief Executive Officer Richard Lariviere said the museum is feeling the effects of the recession just like any other business or institution. He said administrators will talk with scientists and curators about how to balance the budget.

"The Field Museum is in really reasonably good shape," he said. "What we're trying to do is protect the future of this place by right-sizing ourselves at this moment to balance our budget, get things under control, so that we can ensure that the future includes the same kind of high quality, world-shaping research and discovery that it has in the past."

Lariviere said the museum's current structure is a "vestige" of university organization dating back to the 1930s and 1940s. For instance, the department of geology contains paleontologists, but no geologists.

"It's really not a rational structure," he said. "It certainly doesn't reflect the interdisciplinary nature and the creativity of the science that goes on here."

He said that makes it harder to explain to the public about the science and research going on behind the scenes.

More than 1 million people visit the museum every year, to see blockbuster shows and the Field's prized possession, a Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue. But the Field's global reputation comes from its cutting-edge scientific research and conservation effects.

"Behind the scenes, there is essentially a non-degree granting university that has scientists of all different stripes who travel around the world and make collections and study species and cultures and artifacts," said Neil Shubin, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and the former provost of the Field.

Shubin says the budget cuts and proposed reorganization mean staff cuts. And those will diminish the museum’s reputation.

"Anytime you see a reorganization like this, it means large staff reductions. I see no way that they can continue the breadth of the research profile that has been one of their, you know, one of the legs of their eminence," Shubin said.

The Field says it will develop a new operating plan over the next six months.

An earlier version of this story referred to Sue as a "life-sized model" of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. But Sue's the real deal!

Illinois Senate overrides Quinn's prison cuts

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 12:39:00 -0600

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois Senate has voted to restore Gov. Pat Quinn's budget cuts that would force the closure of prisons and other state facilities.

The Senate voted 35-16 to reject cuts of $56 million to funds for the Tamms high-security prison, the Dwight women's lockup and other sites.

The measure moves to the House. If the House approves it, Quinn wouldn't be forced to spend the money on the facilities. But it would prohibit the Democratic governor from spending the cash on anything else.

Quinn opposed the override. He wants to improve child-protection program funding. His administration has argued that Tamms and some juvenile detention centers are underutilized and that developmentally disabled residents in state institutions would do better in community settings.

Protesters arrested after occupying Chicago clinic

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:30:13 -0500

Almost two dozen people have been arrested after barricading themselves inside a Chicago mental health clinic to protest plans to close it.

The Chicago Tribune reports that at about 1 a.m. Friday police cut through chains that protesters had used to lock themselves into the Woodlawn Mental health Clinic and began arresting people

A police spokesman says 11 were released without charges and charges are pending against the rest.

The South Side clinic is one of six that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has proposed closing.

The occupation began Thursday evening and organizers say it included facility clients and other "allies" of the movement.

The say 200 protesters were outside the building at the height of the protest.

Cook County might raise alcohol tax, extend tobacco tax

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:52:00 -0600

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is calling for more taxes on alcohol and tobacco products. Under her proposal, smokeless tobacco and cigars will be taxed the same as cigarettes. As for alcohol, taxes would go up by 50 percent in Cook County. That would add a few cents on beer and wine and not much more on hard liquor.

At a news conference Wednesday morning, Preckwinkle was flanked by medical specialists and experts as she touted the public health benefits of such taxes. The CEO of Cook County Hospitals, Dr. Ramanathan Raju, cited studies showing alcohol taxes like these reduce substance abuse.

"When the cost of alcohol is higher, younger people are less likely to drink and if they do drink, they drink less," Raju said.

But even though taxes on alcohol are going up, Preckwinkle said the overall price of alcohol could be going down because of the proposed cut in county sales tax.

"The cost of alcohol will go down, because we've reduced the sales tax," Preckwinkle said.

Preckwinkle's 2012 budget calls for another .25 percent shaved off the sales tax, with the goal being a one cent savings on the dollar by 2013.

She did not comment on whether or not a reduced cost of alcohol overall will cancel out the alleged benefits of the proposed sales tax.

The county estimates the new tax would generate around $11 million dollars in revenue.

Meanwhile, Cook County's hospitality industry is bracing for some pain if the proposed increase passes. Ben Jenkins is with the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. He said the higher tax would be a big burden for business owners.

"Restaurant or bar owners that buy bottles or buy alcohol by the case - it adds up several dollars a bottle and a lot more per case," Jenkins said. As those extra dollars accumulate, Jenkins said bars and restaurants may have to sacrifice jobs to save money. The Council also released a report showing the proposed tax could end up costing Cook County a few hundred hospitality jobs.

County commissioners are scheduled to vote on the tax plans Monday.

Slashed pay for thousands of needy After School Matters kids

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 06:15:00 -0500

After School Matters is practically a household name in Chicago. It's the city's premier afterschool program, founded 20 years ago by former first lady Maggie Daley. It offers needy high school students apprenticeships—20,000 of them this year alone. The teens learn skills in the arts, academics, or sports— but they also get paid. They’re starting work this month under drastically slashed stipends.

Sixteen-year-old Destiny Velez is beaming. The teenager is standing next to her painting, which has a bold red “sold” sign near it.

VELEZ: I met the people who bought it—they loved it. I felt so happy and proud that someone would actually buy it.

Chicago’s civic and business elite are here at this After School Matters fundraiser. They sip wine and look at the teen art, produced under the direction of professional artists.

VELEZ: They taught me how to bring in color and make things pop, so I did orange, you know, it’s bright and catches your eye.

Apprentice chefs serve hors d’oeuvres. Apprentice musicians and dancers perform.

Senior Mina Landon moves across the stage in synchronized dips and dives with other kids she calls her “coworkers.” Mina earned $870 dancing this summer with After School Matters. She says she learned much more than hip-hop.

LANDON: You get paid a decent amount of money. It’s very satisfying, but also you have to come, sign in, check in, check out, take it like a job. Like don’t come late or you dock your pay. If you really want to get a job, this can also start you off.

It’s an intentional mix of work experience and talent development. Kids fix computers, write songs. After School Matters is the biggest program of its kind in the country; it’s been replicated in Boston and New York, just to name two cities.

But beginning this month, the group is tinkering big time with its model. Chicago teens are getting a 75 percent pay cut. Students who last spring made almost $400 will now make $100. That’s for 10 weeks. After School Matters cites the “challenging economic climate.”

MALDONADO (talking to a student): …It’s changed. The money part—the monetary part has changed. I need you to understand that.

After School Matters instructors like artist Jeff Maldonado have had to break the news to teenagers this fall. In the Hancock High School library, it’s the first thing Maldonado tells kids as he interviews them for his printmaking class.

MALDONADO: So it’s really not about the money. It’s like, if you’re interested in becoming a better artist, that’s what we’re looking for.

In the roughed up Englewood neighborhood, Cynthia Rashid has been conducting interviews too, at Beloved Community Family Services. She teaches kids graphic design and journalism on the second floor of a church building.

RAHSID: Even in the interview the other day we talked about the stipend—the look on their faces was just--psssshhhhh.

Rashid hasn’t had to recruit a single kid in the last four years. They come to her—usually many more than she can take. Now, parents say the $100 stipend won’t even cover the cost of getting to the church.

RAHSID: Normally we have teens who call back and say, ‘I want this job.’ Now, we’re calling them three and four times.

And Rashid is concerned about holding on to the kids she does accept without the carrot of a big paycheck.

Northwestern University professor Bart Hirsch just finished an evaluation of After School Matters. He says nationally, participation in after school programs by high school students tends to be weak; most programs are targeted toward younger children. In Chicago, kids clamor for a spot within the program.

When Hirsch began his study in 2009, students earned the equivalent of $5 an hour. Now, they’re getting $1.10. That could come back to bite the city. Hirsch found kids in After School Matters were less likely to be involved in “problem behaviors” than kids in other after school programs.

HIRSCH: The fact that they were paid some money might make them less likely to have to engage in those types of activities such as selling drugs or being involved in a gang because they got the money from After School Matters.

At Beloved Community, director Delphine Rankin says students often spend their stipends on basic needs.

RANKIN: I’ve seen, the day or two days after we issue the stipends to our participants, you actually see some of the kids come in with the right attire for the season. Until you’ve been in this community and you see what some of the families are facing, you don’t realize the significance.

Overall, After School Matters stipends sent nearly $7 million to Chicago families last year. That amount is being cut by 40 percent. That’s gotten almost no public attention.

After School Matters board member Avis LaVelle says the board wrestled with its decision to cut stipends. Both Chicago Public Schools and the state of Illinois reduced funding to the nonprofit this year.

LAVELLE: We feel like there are a number of young people who will still come and participate in the program. They would have come for free, because they enjoy it that much. We wanted to be able to provide as many opportunities as possible and be very realistic about our financial capability.

But overall, WBEZ has found After School Matters’ budget is up over last year’s. The current $25.5 million dollar budget is average for the last seven years.

While the overall budget pie is the same, the slice of that pie going to teen stipends is a lot thinner.

LaVelle says the nonprofit is closing down certain “drop-in” and “club” programs it ran in past years and is moving participants into more costly apprenticeships. LaVelle says the board decided to cut stipends instead of reducing the number of students it serves. A spokeswoman from After School Matters’ PR firm said in late September that recruitment levels were similar to last year’s. After School Matters says youth have told them in surveys that money is not the most important part of this for teens.

Back in the Hancock High School library, many kids say they’re happy to be paid any money to do something they love.

But some say they’ll now feel pressure to find an outside job on top of this. And that’s not easy with a teen unemployment rate over 27 percent. It’s 47 percent among black teens.

Seventeen-year-old Jovani Garcia got used to helping his family after working in After School Matters this summer—

JOVANI: It was like around $900, so I gave them $500, and I kept the rest.

LUTTON: Do you know what they spent the money on?

JOVANI: I think on the house, mortgage thing. Yeah.

Alums from Hancock’s After School Matters programs have gotten college scholarships.

Whether kids can see those longer term payoffs—and whether they can live without a paycheck now— will help define the future of Chicago’s premier afterschool program.

Correction: An earlier version of this report incorrectly identified After School Matters as the recent recipient of a $1 million dollar Bank of America grant. That grant did not go to After School Matters.

Fiscal Year	Operating budget (in millions)	Amount spent on stipends to teens (in millions)	% of budget going to teen stipends	Amount spent on administration	Amount spent on fundraising	% of budget going to administration and fundraising
2005	19.0	*		875,880	395,282	6.69
2006	23.4	*		1,180,857	715,669	8.10
2007	25.8	*		1,817,569	453,838	8.81
2008	27.5	*		3,463,672	455,614	14.28
2009	31.8	5.36	16.9%	3,164,123	1,305,403	14.06
2010	27.5	6.96	25.3%	2,665,527	1,236,330	14.18
2011	24.6	6.8	27.6%
2012	25.5	3.9	15.3%	*	*

Source: After School Matters
2011 figures are unaudited. 2012 figures are budgeted amounts.
*WBEZ requested these figures; ASM has not provided them.
WBEZ asked to see ASM's full FY12 budget; the nonprofit declined that request.
ASM's fiscal year runs July 1 to June 30.

Governor to outline state budget cuts today

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 10:23:00 -0500

Governor Pat Quinn's administration says it considered deep cuts to parole officers and tax collectors while looking for ways to balance the Illinois budget.

Programs moving people with disabilities and mental illness into community care were also considered for cuts. But Quinn aide Kelly Kraft said Wednesday those ideas have been discarded. She says they never rose above the level of brainstorming.

Still, Kraft acknowledged the ideas were shared with the General Assembly as recently as Tuesday.

The Democratic governor says legislators have not given him enough money to keep state government running for a full year. He says he'll have to make deep cuts to keep within the budget that lawmakers approved.

Quinn is expected to announce today what cuts he thinks must be made.

Chicago facing $635 million deficit, Emanuel says

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:24:00 -0500

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Friday that the city's facing a $635 million budget shortfall next fiscal year.

Emanuel told reporters the budget deficit isn't anything new. He didn't directly criticize former Mayor Richard Daley, but Emanuel said the issue is long-term and structural.

"That means you got a problem that you have not addressed," Emanuel said.

Emanuel said he doesn't plan to raise taxes, cut police officers or dip into the city's savings to fund basic city operations.

"The capital I'll spend will be political capital to make the tough choices that we have to do for the city," Emanuel said. "The capital I won't spend is the taxpayers' dollars asking them to put more into a system that hasn't been reformed. This system needs reform. It is calling out for it."

Emanuel said he will keep some middle management positions frozen and make some city services compete with the private sector to see which one can do the job for a cheaper price.