and Life Goes On.....

There have been periods of time in the last 8 days that have been downright heart wrenching to me. On June 2, Governor Rauner vowed to suspend the LIHEAP program if he did not have a budget he liked in place. On June 30th, I sat, linked to two of my friends who also worked with the program and literally watched as 53,000+ Illinois residence lost their Percentage of Income Payment Plan. my screen was up to one particular client, and my friend, Jen's screen was up to the active report. I was kicked out of the system about 11:45 and her screen went blank at 12:02. It was seriously watching a death. The next day, we had to start telling our clients. Many of my PIPP clients are seniors. We had sent letters out in April telling them we were doing our re-certification process different this year and that we would send a letter closer to time for them to come in. They were calling me just to make sure they hadn't missed their letter. I had to start telling them, "at 12:01, July 1, the PIPP program was dropped throughout the state". Yesterday, I had a lady tell me that it looked like this was the last straw and as much as she hated it, she was going to probably be moving to Joliet and moving in with her kids. I have had so many tears this week, and I want to cry right along with them. I had a lady last week that thanked me for everything I had done, she is 85, she was crying. I hung up and cried, because as many times as we made trips to Springfield to try to educate the Governor and legislators, it didn't work and I have felt like a failure.
     I continued to tell all of my clients to call their legislators, and hand out their phone numbers. I did apparently have one that was tired of the phone calls and told one of my clients to tell me to call him. He has vowed to come down and let us teach him more about PIPP, I hope he holds to that.
     Right now, we are not counting on having any State funds at all, even though, the state funds are not and never have been part of the General Revenue Fund. In 2002, a bill was passed enacting the 48 cent meter charge on the utility companies that have over 100,000 clients. This is part of a customer service charge on the utility bill. In this Act, that money was specifically to be used to help low-income families. Last week, on July 1st, as a matter of fact, just hours after our program was stopped, the Governor borrowed some of that money to pay bills while there is no budget. I do not understand how that is legal, and things like this takes time to sort out.
     I do very well understand that this is just one of many issues going on with the state having no budget. I also know that to take away the PIPP program, where people are being responsible for paying 6% of their income to their energy bill every month, is just nuts. I had people who were finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. They were being able to budget, manage their bills, and work on making life better for themselves and their families. It is just truly nothing short of heart wrenching.
     Many of our fellow agencies have shut down at least the Energy Assistance departments. Because we are structured to where all of our fieldstaff work with all the programs, right at the moment, we are still open. We closed the offices last Wednesday because we had no clear direction yet as to if we had the authority to pay staff without a budget. I am praying for a resolution soon but I truly thought it would happen last week. Now the Senate is off until the 14th, I don't know how they do that, knowing so many lives are at stake.  I hope people remember this when election time rolls around.


There have been a couple of bright spots in our personal life at least. Last Saturday, the 4th, the boys both had the day off and I did so we decided to take a daytrip. Our original plans were to go to the Alton/Grafton area, but when I started looking things up, I found out most of it was still closed due to flooding. Plan B....Springfield. It's a little ironic, because of course, that seems to be my home away from home but when I go, it's usually all business and I don't spend much time doing the touristy stuff. We went to the Old State Capitol, and then walked over to the new State Capitol. I was amazed at 1) how EMPTY it was compared to the last few times I have been there and 2) those days that we were there and things were so chaotic, tours were still being given every 30 minutes. The upside of that, is like me, they got to go into the chambers and watch as laws were being made, whereas on Saturday, nobody was there. The funny thing to me was, when we go during the week, after you pass security, you go where you want, when you want. So, since we had walked quite a ways, I had told the guys that we would run to the basement and get a water out of the pop machine as soon as we got there. So we get through security and they tell us to wait in the rotunda for the next tour, and I asked if we could run downstairs and get a drink.....no. Okay, so when the Governor and most of the legislators are in house, you go where you want, when they aren't, you can't even go get a bottle of water......yeah, I'm from Illinois. We also went to Lincoln's Home and then back to Coles County Airport for fireworks. It was a good day, and it was nice to see a different side of the Capitol. The lady that was our tour guide was amazing at knowing all of the art work, some of it I had looked up on the internet but some I had never really noticed until the building wasn't so crowded.

Then, another bright spot of the week, Robert has wanted a diesel pick-up truck for, well, forever as far as he is concerned, Through a series of events between him and one of his best friends, he now owns one. It stands about a mountain's height tall and we had to get a wooden box for me to stand on to get in it, and then Garrett still had to pull me up into the seat. I am very proud of it for him. Typical mechanic, he now owns 6 vehicles, 2 will run someday and be restored, one needs the rest of the parts taken off of it and then scrapped and one he is hoping to get on the market soon. It truly has been a bright spot though, seeing him so thrilled.

Hope I have better news on the workfront soon.

Until then,