The Illinois General Assembly ended a two-year fiscal stalemate by passing (and overriding the Governor’s veto) a $36 billion fiscal year 2018 budget that included $5 billion in additional revenue by increasing the individual and corporate income taxes. Forefront applauds the General Assembly for their efforts to begin to address the state’s fiscal crisis. However, we must acknowledge and address the devastation of the nonprofit sector over the last two years. 

As the state membership organization of the social impact sector, Forefront has witnessed the pain caused by inaction and gridlock. Homeless service providers have been forced to cut services and staff, seniors have lost access to services including home delivered meals and transportation,  and our higher education institutions are in crisis as thousands of low-income college students lost their grants, forcing many to drop out. 

“For over two years, nonprofits provided critical services to communities despite the state’s inability to pay for their services,” said, Eric Weinheimer, CEO of Forefront. “Their resilience and commitment under such trying circumstances are beyond inspiring. Our hope is that this budget is just the first step towards elected officials honoring their responsibilities and serving all the people of Illinois, especially those most in need.”

We thank everyone who took action and called or visited their members of the General Assembly.  But we have more work to do!  The new, permanent revenue will help ease the crisis in our sector. However, Illinois still faces billions of dollars of backlog bills and many other obligations and needed investments. Forefront will continue to fight for the resources necessary to aid our sector and all the people of Illinois.