By Maria Kantzavelos
Law Bulletin staff writer
Illinois' legal aid community can breathe a collective sigh of relief that it has been spared from the more than $1 billion in state budget cuts for the new fiscal year announced last week by Gov. Patrick J. Quinn.
The Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, which was formed in 1999 when the legislature passed the Illinois Equal Justice Act to dole out grants to agencies that provide legal services to the state's poor, is budgeted for $1.75 million for Fiscal Year 2011, which began July 1, said its executive director Leslie Corbett. The amount is the same as the foundation's funding appropriation for Fiscal Year 2010, when its funding level was slashed in half.
State funding for civil legal aid is appropriated through the Illinois Equal Justice Act and passed through the budget of the Illinois attorney general.
"We're safe at this point," Corbett said, adding that additional cuts to the state budget are possible. "I'm pretty confident because, at this point, all the constitutional budgets have been spared, and that's where we're at."
Still, a sobering question follows that proverbial sigh of relief: "Is there going to be any money?" said Mary C. Rudasill, the volunteer executive director of Dispute Resolution Institute in Carbondale.
The nonprofit agency, which provides free mediation services to indigent parents who have a custody or visitation issue in the First Judicial Circuit, is among the many legal aid organizations that have been waiting since December to receive their share of the state funding promised to them for the fiscal year that just ended.
The delayed cash flow and previous cuts in state funding have come at a time of a rising demand for legal aid services.
"We've gotten a lot more referrals than ever before, and we have the same number of volunteer mediators," Rudasill said. "There's been a larger number of people out of work and they have custody and visitation issues. It's been hard."
Many of the clients coming to the institute in Carbondale are those who have been ordered by a judge to resolve their cases through mediation, due to a local rule that allows such an order in cases involving children, Rudasill said.
"They're still making the referrals and we're still limping along," Rudasill said.
Earlier this week, she said, her organization was still waiting for the actual dollars from the $25,000 grant it was awarded in December by the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, which was half of what it had requested.
"The state is sort of borrowing from us while we provide the services," Rudasill said. "Really, we're just doing a bare-bones operation. We haven't been able to expand the program or be innovative at all."
Late last week, $1 million of the $1.75 million the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation was promised for this year finally showed up. Corbett said the foundation this week has been issuing grant checks to the 14 legal aid organizations around the state that have long been waiting to see that promised, albeit reduced, state funding for this year. She said the foundation is planning for the remaining $750,000 to arrive during the coming December.
"It will be going out to folks who desperately need it," Corbett said. "It's relief. It's overdue relief, but it's still relief."
The governor announced last week that he was slashing state spending in a number of areas in an attempt to close a nearly $13 billion deficit. The cuts were made a month after lawmakers sent Quinn an unbalanced budget. Instead of balancing the budget, lawmakers for the second year in a row gave Quinn special authority to make the cuts himself.
In addition to reducing funding for human services, education and many other areas, Quinn slashed the amount of money the state gives counties each year to cover a portion of state's attorneys' and public defenders' salaries.
More budget cuts are anticipated, Corbett said, and while the state appropriation for legal aid programs survived the latest round of announced cuts, she said legal aid supporters are planning an advocacy campaign "to let the governor know that this issue has a broad base of support across the state."
The amount of money the state allocates to the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation to distribute grant awards to legal aid providers throughout the state had remained level at $3.5 million for three years, until it was cut in half during the 2009 budget process to the current $1.75 million. Corbett had said that additional cuts could "cripple" the legal aid system.
As a result of that 50 percent slash in funding, the foundation last December eliminated its grant funding to eight legal aid organizations, and 14 legal aid agencies saw their grants reduced over the previous year anywhere from 15 percent to 79 percent, Corbett said.
Corbett said the reduced funds the foundation was left to work with that year, along with the state's current delays in paying its bills "has turned our grant- making from kind of playing Santa into feeling like we're more like the Grinch."
Cabrini Green Legal Aid took a big hit last year, when its grant award from the state foundation dropped to $15,000, compared to $70,000 in the previous year. And the agency this week was among those that still haven't seen a cent of the promised funding.
The agency's executive director, Robert B. Acton, said the organization has been surviving on its cash reserves in order to avoid cutting its services and staff. Those services include its criminal records work and helping a growing number of unemployed job seekers with record expungments. But those reserves are nearing "the red zone," Acton said.
Acton said he was relieved to hear the news of no further cuts to the foundation's $1.75 million funding level.
"We're thankful. I know how difficult these budgetary times are for the state - they're tragic," Acton said.
Still, he said, "at $1.75 million, we're already in a remarkably dangerous zone of not being able to meet the needs of vulnerable people in their most vulnerable moments.
"It's a mixed story," Acton said. "Because the numbers are already so dangerously low that it's hard to stand on my desk and do a dance."
As the Aug. 13 deadline nears for applications from legal aid organizations seeking Illinois Equal Justice Foundation grants under the state's new fiscal year, Corbett said a factor in the decision-making process for granting awards will be whether an organization can handle the cash-flow uncertainty of the state.
"Managing organizations without knowing when the cash is coming in is an incredibly difficult thing to do," Corbett said. "That's going to be our number-one question for folks: Will this grant be helpful to your organization or harmful?"