'We're Just Getting Clobbered'; States' Budget Squeeze Takes Toll on Programs and People
Every weekday at the Erie Neighborhood House on this city's North Side, feisty 4- and 5-year-olds file into classrooms that bear names such as Sunflower and Daffodil to play with Legos and dinosaurs and receive their daily lessons in Spanish and English.</br></br>Their parents, depending on the family income, pay as little as $4.33 a month for the all-day child care that costs as much as $250 a week on the open market, an enormous sum for the many who are recent immigrants working two or three jobs to survive.</br></br>But the sounds of children playing and learning in these classrooms may soon be silenced as part of a belt-tightening proposal by Gov. George Ryan (R) that would do away with a $184 million early childhood grant that subsidizes pre-kindergarten classes for 220,000 low-income children around the state.</br></br>Illinois, like nearly every other state, is facing lean times for the first time in years. Tax revenue is well below expectations, the cost of health care is exploding and higher costs for unemployment claims and new security initiatives are taxing already thin budgets. Everything is on the table -- including tax incentives for businesses, public education money and programs aimed at the poor, disabled and elderly -- as governors and state lawmakers try to make up more than $40 billion worth of budget shortfalls.</br></br>In Maryland, the state Senate yesterday gave preliminary approval to a new austerity budget that would slow spending after years of dramatic increases while preserving a scheduled 2 percent income tax cut. Virginia, with an annual budget of about $25 billion, approved new spending plans last week that cut social programs and other services while increasing fees and college tuitions to close a budget gap estimated at $3.8 billion for the next 2 1/2 years.