Budget ‘trick’ will hurt health care staffing

The French Drop is a sleight-of-hand magic trick where a coin from one hand is passed to the other while the audience’s attention is distracted elsewhere.

Gov. Pritzker’s proposed FY 2026 budget contains a French Drop that will harm Illinois adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

In bold print, up front in the proposed budget, is a $20 million wage increase for the thousands of front line staff who care for individuals like my son David who can’t look after themselves. But then, tucked away in the fine print far back in the budget document, is a $32 million cut in staff care hours. You do the math: 20 — 32 = -12.

A $12 million overall funding decrease to disability services, a step backward for services that are already underfunded. Worse yet, the proposed budget tried to conceal the cut, hoping that the disability community and service agencies wouldn’t find out until it was too late.

Shame on the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget! This kind of dishonesty is just plain wrong. So is any disability-related budget cut.

For years Illinois has been under a federal court order to improve disability services and raise staff wages. Staff, after all, are the backbone of supports for disabled adults.

The Ligas settlement was supposed to last 9 years.

But Illinois is in year 15 with no end in sight because it refuses to fully fund staff wages, the number one requirement for compliance.

Now the state has the hutzpah to cut the disability caregiver workforce — and to hide those cuts from plain view. I urge you to call your state legislators and demand a fix that restores the $32 million in staff hours to the budget.

James Gould

Board Chair, Association for Individual Development