Governor's brutal cuts are immoral
Budgets are more than truncheons to wield political power.
The money a budget represents becomes buildings, employees, programs and services to people in crisis and, when that money abruptly disappears, that budget can have very dire consequences.
Such is the gritty reality of Gov. Blagojevich's recent plan to balance our FY09 budget.
Buildings, employees, programs and services will no longer exist.
His brutal elimination of crucial social service programs by $260 million, including a combined $16.6 million in services for victims of sexual and domestic assault, means the utter devastation of the human services sector in general, and of rape crisis centers in particular.
We who provide services for victims and survivors of sexual assault have already suffered cuts at the federal level this year.
As a result of nearly $1.4 million in federal cuts, we are operating our truncated programs on shoestring budgets and decimated staffing levels.
If the governor's plan is passed, there would be less than $1 million dollars for 33 rape crisis centers across 90 counties in Illinois and organizations like YWCA Metropolitan Chicago would be unable to counsel nearly 1,300 adults and children, answer almost 4,000 rape crisis calls, provide medical or legal advocacy for close to 850 survivors of sexual assault.
How many cuts does the governor expect us to withstand before our services literally disappear?
On behalf of all the organizations working to help survivors of sexual and domestic violence in Illinois, we believe it is essential that Illinois legislators reject the governor's proposed budget cuts.
We admire the governor's intent to balance the budget, but the solution cannot come at the expense of women and child victims of rape.
In fact, to ignore the impact of our state budget priorities on the individual would be to ignore the morality of those priorities.
Without this money, our buildings, employees, programs and services will disappear.
But our clients, and the circumstances that made them, won't.
Laura Thrall
CEO
YWCA Metropolitan Chicago