Leading up to his decision to call state Legislators back to Springfield, Gov. Pat Quinn appeared on campus touting the importance of social services facing budget cuts.
Quinn’s visit drew a crowd of roughly 60 people to a warm second-floor classroom in the Wham Education Building Thursday. The governor told them he would call a special session of the Legislature.
“It’s a hot day, but it’s going to be a pretty hot day in Springfield,” he said to coordinators and parents of children receiving therapy from the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders.
A proclamation ordering legislators to reconvene Tuesday to amend the budget was sent out by the governor’s office Friday. Quinn said he hopes the Legislature would feel better about approving his proposed increase of the state’s income tax from 3 percent to 4.5 percent for two years.
Cutting state dollars for social services, such as The Autism Program that oversees the SIU center, would be one of the consequences of not having another revenue stream to pay for state spending, Quinn said.
Anthony Cuvo, director of the autism center on campus, said cutting off The Autism Program would mean the end of state dollars for the center, which has treated 465 children with autism and trained more than 175 graduate students in nine years. Those services would cease to exist if the budget is approved as-is.
Legislators sent Quinn an operations budget with multiple cuts because they did not agree with the governor’s income tax proposal.
Closing the center in Carbondale would mean out-of-state commutes for families needing autism services and the cancellation of graduate assistantships offered through the College of Education and Human Services, said Kenneth Teitelbaum, dean of the college.
“Without these programs and centers, we would have to eliminate a lot of graduate assistantships,” Teitelbaum said. “If we don’t have this center, where in this local area are we going to be able to send our students to be able to get that important experience of observing and working with children with autism?”
Georgia Winson, chief of The Autism Program, said the program operates 11 other training centers across the state that would be cut if the budget is approved as-is. She said that would worsen the shortage of specialists trained to work with people with autism.
To prevent those cuts from happening, Winson said she and supporters have met with legislators to plead their case.
Rep. Mike Bost, a Carbondale Republican who voted against Quinn’s proposal in May, said the governor has not been open to suggestions from Republicans. Bost said he would encourage Quinn to use money from other parts of the budget to prevent cuts to social services, or allow those programs access to block grants.
“If that is where your priority is, put your money where your mouth is,” he said. “You can’t blame Republicans if (Democrats) are in charge.”
Quinn, a Democrat, said he knows how to work across partisan lines. He would not say if he is willing to consider revenue streams outside of the income tax.
Daily Egyptian reporter Barton Lorimor can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 263 or barton.lorimor@siude.com.
