Chicago City Wire

Envision Unlimited’s Mark McHugh is asking the Illinois General Assembly to better fund care of the developmentally disabled and others at high risk. 

“We pay staff wages for more than just a couple of working hours because – especially with the kind of staffing situation we have here – there's a lot of overtime,” McHugh told Chicago City Wire. “We have a lot of sessions and therefore there's a lot of overtime. And we need to be able to use [the] money for that. We need to be able to use [the] money to give staff to pay for incentives for merit increases, especially during the pandemic.” 

“We need to use some of that money for incentives for people to do extended shifts." 

McHugh, president and CEO of Chicago-based Envision Unlimited, and other providers similar to Envision are backing the They Deserve More campaign. 

Envision Unlimited provides programming for the developmentally disabled and autistic as well as mental wellness services.

McHugh said of a competing set of bills that would direct the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding the state owes to providers as a direct pass-through to employees would not be best for providers. 

They Deserve More and McHugh have come out against legislation like HB4647, sponsored by State Rep. Tom Demmer (R-Dixon), which would limit the ways funds are spent.

Demmer's bill is supported by AFSCME which represents around 10 percent of the provider workforce. It in part says "that funding should be passed through to employees, all such funds are passed through in their entirety to employees in accordance with the legislative or administrative directive."

They Deserve More is a statewide collaboration of approximately 90 community-based organizations, trade and advocacy groups, and disabled people's friends and relatives. 

It was created in 2017 to ensure that Illinois fulfills its responsibility to support people with intellectual and developmental impairments, according to Prairie State Wire. 

The group is advocating for more flexibility in spending the money the state must provide.

The Guidehouse Rate Study is a 2019 study conducted by a third-party observer hired to show the state how to appropriately support the network of organizations that serve the intellectually impaired throughout the state. According to the analysis, such programs were underfunded by $246.8 million in the fiscal year 2023 alone. 

The research was ordered after a court found the state in violation of a consent decree on how to pay the programs in 2018. The initial consent decree was signed in 2011, but the state is yet to comply 11 years later. 

According to the Guidehouse report, nearly 10,000 people live in behavioral programs across the state 24 hours a day. Individual day programs are used by another 20,000 people. Other state-funded programs serve another 5,000 people.