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Berwyn, IL —
Come next month, the Seguin Foundation may not have the money to pay its employees.
Since the state stopped providing promised funding to the nonprofit agency, it has had to rely on credit to keep its day-to-day operations going, said Seguin’s president and CEO, John Voit.
“We would have to give our staff IOUs for their paychecks,” Voit said. “It could be as soon as maybe 30 days from now.”
Nowhere else to go
Cicero-based Seguin offers a range of services for individuals throughout suburban Cook County with developmental disabilities and other special needs. The looming IOUs could have drastic effects on the lives of Seguin’s clients, said La Grange resident Richard Chromcak.
Chromcak’s son, Michael, 31, was diagnosed with a high seizure profile at 13 months of age. He has been in some form of special education all his life, and has been a Seguin client for the past 10 years.
“I’m very pleased with his treatment there,” Chromcak said. “I’m there every day, I know a lot of the people, the case workers, and they do an excellent job.”
If Seguin closes its doors, Chromcak said his son will have nowhere else to go.
“There’s Helping Hand (in Countryside) but there is a waiting list there,” Chromcak said. “Michael’s happy where he is today. I don’t know what I would do. Michael would have to go to work with me every day and have nothing else to do. There’s no other organization that handles 31-year-old people. If funding dried up, it would affect a lot of people. And there are people who are a lot worse off.”
Kicked off the list
About two months ago the agency received a letter from the state saying Seguin is no longer on a list of agencies the state pays on time. By now, the state is behind in its payments to Seguin by nearly $2.3 million.
According to State Comptroller Dan Hynes’s office, the state has a level of unpaid obligations worth $4.4 billion. That number will continue to grow because of insufficient revenues to meet demands.
With an annual budget of about $25 million, Seguin spends about $2.25 million a month on payroll and other basic things like phones and electricity. To stay afloat, the agency has had to borrow money. James Haptonstahl, senior vice president of Seguin, said borrowing will leave the agency with hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest payments.
Come next month, the Seguin Foundation may not have the money to pay its employees.
Since the state stopped providing promised funding to the nonprofit agency, it has had to rely on credit to keep its day-to-day operations going, said Seguin’s president and CEO, John Voit.
“We would have to give our staff IOUs for their paychecks,” Voit said. “It could be as soon as maybe 30 days from now.”
Nowhere else to go
Cicero-based Seguin offers a range of services for individuals throughout suburban Cook County with developmental disabilities and other special needs. The looming IOUs could have drastic effects on the lives of Seguin’s clients, said La Grange resident Richard Chromcak.
Chromcak’s son, Michael, 31, was diagnosed with a high seizure profile at 13 months of age. He has been in some form of special education all his life, and has been a Seguin client for the past 10 years.
“I’m very pleased with his treatment there,” Chromcak said. “I’m there every day, I know a lot of the people, the case workers, and they do an excellent job.”
If Seguin closes its doors, Chromcak said his son will have nowhere else to go.
“There’s Helping Hand (in Countryside) but there is a waiting list there,” Chromcak said. “Michael’s happy where he is today. I don’t know what I would do. Michael would have to go to work with me every day and have nothing else to do. There’s no other organization that handles 31-year-old people. If funding dried up, it would affect a lot of people. And there are people who are a lot worse off.”
Kicked off the list
About two months ago the agency received a letter from the state saying Seguin is no longer on a list of agencies the state pays on time. By now, the state is behind in its payments to Seguin by nearly $2.3 million.
According to State Comptroller Dan Hynes’s office, the state has a level of unpaid obligations worth $4.4 billion. That number will continue to grow because of insufficient revenues to meet demands.
With an annual budget of about $25 million, Seguin spends about $2.25 million a month on payroll and other basic things like phones and electricity. To stay afloat, the agency has had to borrow money. James Haptonstahl, senior vice president of Seguin, said borrowing will leave the agency with hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest payments.
Seguin has had to borrow money before. But this time around, the agency can only borrow so much. As of last week Seguin will have tapped $2.2 million of its $2.5 million line of credit.
“That’s dangerously close to the maximum amount we can borrow on our line of credit,” Voit said.
Once they reach the end of that credit line, the IOUs start going out.
Seguin gets some of its state money via the Illinois Department of Humans Services. Tom Green, a spokesperson for the IDHS, said payments are late because the department has not received the money to give Seguin.
“It’s really an issue with the comptroller’s office not having the funds to make payments. Many providers are ... a couple of months behind on payments. So the situation for Seguin is not unique,” he said.
Green said he does not know when the payments will be sent to Seguin.
“This is just a symptom of the financial crisis that the state is in,” he said.
Making people the priority
The majority of Seguin’s budget goes toward staff payroll.
Voit is concerned staff cuts would endanger the lives of the people served by the foundation.
“Well, you can’t cut costs when 80 percent of your budget is salaries and paying for the people that are caring for our individuals with disabilities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year,” he said.
On average, Seguin’s full-time employees make $10 per hour.
“It’s difficult to cut salary because they’re already paid so low,” said Haptonstahl.
Brookfield resident Karen Miller, a Seguin employee, cares for a woman who lives in a Seguin residential facility.
“She lives in (a) house with five other people. The interaction is good for her. She has a good quality of life, loves the staff, and needs a lot of care,” said Miller.
Her client doesn’t have the choice of getting a job to support herself, Miller said.
“It is the responsibility of society to help take care of those (who) are vulnerable, like people with disabilities that can’t take care of themselves,” she said. “I understand the budget concerns, but I still think serving these people should be a priority.”
— Reporters Joe Sinopoli and Laura Bollin contributed to this report.
