Governor needs to sign Senate Bill 1103 soon
I am very concerned that Gov. Rod Blagojevich still has not signed Senate Bill 1103, which restores funding to services for substance abuse and child welfare, though it has been sitting on his desk for weeks now.

His office has expressed the belief there is plenty of time and that the funding attached is new spending that may be optional. As a social worker, I am aware that neither of these are the case.
Foster parents, foster children and birth parents seeking reunification are already experiencing hardship as a result of the announced cuts. Additionally, the Child Welfare Services restorations in SB 1103 are not new spending — they are returning spending to last year’s level.

It is very important that the governor immediately restore funds for substance abuse treatment and child welfare services. The impact of delay is already causing an unraveling in the system of support for substance-exposed infants, children in foster care, and children and youth in residential treatment. The impact of stopping restoration altogether would be horrible. The cuts to system of care services will have these results: More children will stay in the child welfare system longer; the children in the system will experience greater disruption in the lives of children in the system; and more foster parents will give up the fostering role, and new foster parents will be more difficult to recruit.

Cuts to screening assessment and support services will have these effects: Fewer youth in residential treatment will get the timely crisis intervention and assessment and these children will have a more difficult time achieving stability and productivity in their lives.

The elimination of the Intact Family Recovery Program in Cook County will have these results: The number and rate of babies born to substance abusing mothers will increase, more children with substance abusing parents will be abused or neglected, more children will come into the system of foster care and Illinois will have lost a program model that has proved to be effective.

The governor's signature on SB 1103 will prevent this enormous harm and he should act immediately.

Brent Diers, Berwyn

Government needs to bail out Americans
Hello U.S. government in Washington, D.C.

You gave the banks billions so they could have their huge parties. Now you’re preparing to hand out more big bucks to GMC, Ford and Chrysler thieves. All these CEOs belong in prison.
Nancy Pelosi,  you’re 100 percent behind giving these thieves this money. They are getting millions and millions, in pay for what?

Help out U.S. American people. How about giving me $500,000? I’m a senior living on social security. You people in Washington, D.C., are really something else. The ordinary people are losing homes and much more. Time to care for us - not the millionaire playboys out there.
Bail all American, ordinary people out, the hell with CEOs. They still are, as in the past, responsible for places shutting their doors.

This money you give us must be not a loan, but ours to keep and tax free now and in the future. Thank you, Washington, D.C.

Dick Wysocke, Stickney

Column was ‘misleading’ former employee says
My name is Stephanie Walker, and I was referenced in the column printed in your paper (Jim Kapsa, Oct. 29). I realize spinning a column is always better for selling papers than writing the facts as they are, however, I object to the insinuation that I left the city because of the financial situation the city is in.

The fact is that I left the city because I had been living apart from my husband, only seeing him on the weekends, for more than a year and that was a strain on our relationship. And while I am willing to sacrifice a lot for my career, my family is not one of those things.

Had my family life not been a factor, I would still be working for the city of Berwyn. This is further supported by the fact that I stayed on working for the city on off hours from my new position to help them during the transition to the new finance director. No one does that for an employer they no longer wish to be associated with. I very much enjoyed working with many of the employees of the city, as well as the mayor and some elected officials.

The column goes on to be critical of the idea of hiring a lawyer to assist in union negotiations. The cost of the city’s unionized payroll, including benefits, is about $22.3 million. The estimated one-year cost of a 5 percent union pay raise would be more than a million dollars, which does not take into account future costs due to an increased base pay.

In case anyone is wondering, $1 million translates into a 5 percent tax property increase. That would be a 5 percent increase in property taxes solely for funding union pay increases. Given those kinds of numbers and an economy, where most citizens are lucky to be getting any raise from their employers, is it really a bad thing to negotiate the best that the city can to keep these costs down?

Stephanie Walker, former Berwyn finance director