With passage of a new state budget stalled in the legislature, a federal judge in Chicago ordered state officials Monday to mail monthly income assistance checks to welfare recipients.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge James Moran takes some of the political heat off legislators, who missed a midnight Sunday deadline for ending their session and are working overtime to piece together a spending plan for the financially strapped state.
Moran said welfare recipients, some of whom have no income except their monthly checks, should not suffer while lawmakers haggle over a budget.
”Under the circumstances, I think it`s time to send them out,” Moran said. ”I`m saying you have to go ahead and follow your normal procedures.”
Moran issued a temporary restraining order requiring state Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch, whose office writes all state checks, to begin mailing out 348,000 welfare checks worth $97 million.
Moran`s order is effective for 10 days. If the legislature still hasn`t approved a budget after that time, lawyers on both sides said they expected further court action to continue the payments.
The first installment of 130,000 checks worth $23 million will be mailed immediately, and welfare recipients should receive them before Thursday`s 4th of July holiday, said Dean Schott, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Aid.
The checks are for people who receive income assistance through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, General Assistance, and Aid to the Aged, Blind and Disabled programs.
Schott also said the state will continue paying for medical care for welfare recipients, including about 100,000 people who receive benefits through General Assistance, the state`s only welfare program for the indigent without dependent children or disabilities.
One of the most controversial issues pending before the legislature is Republican Gov. Jim Edgar`s plan to eliminate medical benefits for General Assistance recipients and to provide income assistance under the program for six months instead of year-round.
Netsch had ordered welfare checks for July printed and stuffed into envelopes. But she had declined to mail them, saying she could not legally do so unless the legislature and Edgar gave her new spending authority.
The ruling was applauded by lawyers for the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, a legal service for the poor that sued the state, and foundation clients who filed into Moran`s courtroom to hear his decision.
”I don`t care if I eat or not, but I have three children I have to look out for. I`m not going to have somebody take something from my children,”
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said Angela Andrews, 30, who lives in the Cabrini-Green housing project and whose only income is the $414 a month she receives from Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
Bettye Bivans, a North Side resident, said she is ”just barely able” to scrape by with her $165 monthly General Assistance check.
”Taking away my assistance means I get to see my refrigerator empty many more times than I already have,” she said.
Even though legislators and Edgar have yet to agree on a spending plan, the state continues to take in tax receipts and other funds, including federal monies, daily. The state receives federal matching funds for all welfare programs except General Assistance.
Democrats, who count the poor as a strong political constituency, have sought to restore welfare cuts proposed by Edgar and to prevent welfare recipients from going without their checks, even if the rest of the budget remained unresolved past Monday`s start of the 1992 fiscal year.
Any delay by the state in issuing income checks to hundreds of thousands of poor Illinoisans, which happened for a week in 1985, would have increased pressure on Democrats to negotiate with Republicans to resolve the budget deadlock.
While welfare recipients had worried about waiting for their checks, people in drug-treatment programs operated by private agencies under contract with the state already had been told not to worry, even though many of the contracts expired Sunday.
The state Department of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, which finances drug-treatment programs statewide, said it sent letters to its contractors last week guaranteeing that they would be paid, out of grant money if necessary.
Similarly, State workers reported to their jobs as usual Monday, assuming that lawmakers will agree on a budget before their next payday, July 11.
”Obviously, we`re acting on the assumption that things will get resolved and they`ll meet their payroll,” said Steve Trossman, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents about 45,000 state workers.