Dear Friends,

The Senate has made progress in two critical areas affecting Chicago families.

Since July 1, two thousand applicants to the Child Care Assistance Program have been turned away. These are parents who cannot go to work or attend school without safe, affordable child care. Through a secretive rulemaking process, Governor Rauner has taken away child care subsidies for 90 percent of new applicants who would have been eligible prior to July 1. Because of the new standards he unilaterally implemented - after vetoing the budget we passed, which would have fully funded child care - even parents earning minimum wage are being turned away, when child care costs on average more than $12,000 per year for an infant in Illinois.

My colleagues and I stood up to the governor last week, exposing his plan to make an end run around the General Assembly to gut child care assistance eligibility without input from members of the public and their elected representatives. Sen. Toi Hutchinson sponsored this legislation, which I co-sponsored, to put into state law the previous, more expansive eligibility standards, so that thousands more families can access assistance. The Senate passed this measure, and now the House must decide whether to advance it to the governor.

The Senate also passed, with my support, legislation that will allow the Chicago Public Schools to avoid laying off hundreds of teachers and cutting classroom resources this school year. It will require the state to treat the Chicago Public Schools like every other school district in Illinois by covering the annual cost of CPS teacher pensions. The measure also provides property tax relief by freezing property taxes at current levels for the next two years, and it sets a 2017 deadline for an overhaul of the state's school funding formula. I remain optimistic that during this time, we can achieve a solution that will promote educational justice for children living in poverty.

This plan is also now in the House, which will return to the Capitol this week. I encourage my colleagues in the House to carefully consider both of these proposals and act quickly to reverse the administration's devastating action against families who rely on child care assistance and to save teaching jobs and classroom resources in CPS. I will continue to update you on this and other legislation affecting our youth, community and working families. Please stay in touch by calling my office at (773) 224-2830, replying to this email or contacting me through my website.

Sincerely,

Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins
16th District – Illinois

Dear Friends,

At a time when hope is wearing thin for many of our most vulnerable residents, I have some good news to share with you. Today, the Senate passed legislation to allow $4.8 billion in federal funding to be used for purposes such as energy bill assistance, infant nutrition, cancer screenings, substance abuse treatment, developmental disabilities services and job training. Legislators on both sides of the aisle agreed to release these dollars while continuing to negotiate on the contested $7 billion remaining in the state's budget.

As a public servant, I uphold and fight for the democratic values that define this state and nation. Justice and equality demand that the people and their representatives not ignore the needs of those who cannot care for themselves or advocate for themselves.

Yet in the ongoing state budget impasse, their needs have been ignored in shocking ways - frail senior citizens denied home care services, at-risk youth with nowhere to go after school but the streets, a day care center for children with HIV/AIDS threatened with closure and families whose medically fragile infants must have expensive, specialty formulas told that at the end of this week, they will be on their own. In one of the most frustrating developments of the past few months, inflexibility on the part of Governor Rauner and his allies kept federal resources already being sent to Illinois from being used for essential services, such as the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program, simply because there was no legal authorization to spend them.

I was proud to vote my values today. I urge my colleagues to continue to push for a budget resolution that recognizes our shared moral responsibility to assist and uplift those in need.

Sincerely,

Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins
16th District – Illinois