OTTAWA, Ill. — Following her daily routine, resource conservationist Vicki Heath opened the LaSalle County Soil and Water Conservation District’s (SWCD) door on July 1 – despite the fact the state of Illinois did not meet the July 1 deadline for crafting a balanced 2016 budget.
The deadline meant suspending Illinois’ 97 SWCDs and exercising similar cost-saving measures in the 2016 budget proposal. Because the proposal was more than $3 billion out of balance, it was vetoed by Gov. Bruce Rauner, A temporary one-month budget is to go before the state House this week to funnel money to keep key services operating, according to Sunday’s Chicago Tribune.
"All I know is (the state) hasn’t passed the (30-day) temporary budget, so we’re just in a kind of waiting game right now," Heath said July 2, the day after the budget deadline. "We don’t know what the plans are for the LaSalle County SWCD, but at this point, the funds are suspended, so that’s kind of where we’re at right now."
The suspension doesn’t necessarily mean closing this county office, Heath noted. Because SWCDs are funded differently through grants instead of taxes, the doors of many of the 97 county districts throughout the state could possibly have stayed open July 1 and beyond despite Illinois’ battle involving the proposed budget.
How long these districts will continue to operate and their staffs receive their paychecks could be anyone’s guess, however.
"We’re set up a little differently," Heath said. "We are paid through grants and get all of our money upfront, so we’ll have our paychecks. We did not get our fourth-quarter grant allocation, though, so that was about $18,000 that we did not get."
The LaSalle County SWCD board of directors was to meet this week, with survival uppermost on the agenda. To date, the board hasn’t spent a lot of time discussing what will happen if the SWCD runs out of money. "We’re not sure, so ... We hope that we’ll survive," she said.
The district was short about $18,000 in funding last year, and is not sure whether it will receive any funding this year and the amount if it does. As far as the $18,000 shortage is concerned, she said it was made "very clear" the district will not receive the funds.
"That’s already past us, so now we’re just looking for next year’s funding," Heath said. "We’re hoping for next year’s money. We’re just kind of caught, just like everybody else."
The SWCD does have other funds resulting from sales of trees, fish for stocking farm ponds and seed to farmers. LaSalle County also gives a certain amount of funding to the district.
"We do other things to generate revenue, so I think we’ll be okay for a little while, but we really depend on (grant allocations)," she said. "We can do at least a year getting by and maybe a little more just with the funds we have in reserve, but we just don’t know."
No farmers have phoned or stopped at the SWCD office to see how things have been operating since the July 1 deadline.
"Ruth (Administrative Coordinator Ruth Anthe) and I have had our funding cut many times over the past many years," Heath noted. "We’ve been cut a lot, but nothing to the point where we don’t have a budget for the next year. Although this is all very new to us in a way, we’re used to the fight for survival, so I think we’ll do what we can to get by."
