Awaiting a State Budget, Illinois Colleges Adapt and Hope

When Wanda Wright, director of civic and community engagement at Chicago State University, thinks about the past year, a single word comes to mind: “nightmare.”

It’s been 18 months since public universities in Illinois saw permanent funding from the state, and the political gridlock is redefining what it means to be a legislative liaison for an Illinois public university.

Last April state legislators approved $600 million in stopgap funding to help colleges get through the semester. In November the Illinois Board of Higher Education approved a combined $17 million in emergency funding to sustain three public universities through the rest of the calendar year. Now, with no budget resolution is in sight, all eyes are on legislators to provide money for 2017 as colleges scramble to cover grant programs typically funded by the state and bring stability to the remaining academic year.

Lame-Duck Session

In the first few days of January, legislators and universities alike are focusing on the lame-duck session. Before new legislators are sworn in on January 11, legislation can pass with a simple majority.

Jonathan Lackland, director of state government relations at Illinois State University, said that some university leaders and his colleagues in Springfield think that this could be the “magic time” when public colleges and universities may finally see a state budget. Until then, university leaders are fighting for funding.

At Chicago State, with the lame-duck session looming, Ms. Wright said the university is down to its last dime. Chicago State submitted documents to the state in December showing how depleted its cash reserves are. The college will exhaust its money by the end of the year and will need to make more cuts unless it gets funding from the statehouse, the documents show.

Ms. Wright said the slim budget is taking its toll. She lacks glossy marketing materials to give to legislators or prospective students in the South Side Chicago neighborhood. Travel to the State Capitol is at her own expense. “I don’t even have business cards.”

She worked through the campus’s holiday break, getting to know the newly elected state legislators. Turnover in the statehouse means Ms. Wright and her colleagues will have to start from the ground up, educating legislators about strains that Illinois’s public colleges have endured for the past year.

Though Chicago State, a historically black university, has confronted distinct challenges — like enrolling just 86 freshmen in the spring and surviving imminent closure — Ms. Wright said her experience isn’t far off from that of the rest of her Illinois colleagues. “We are living the nightmare along with everyone else.”

Recycled Talking Points

Jennifer Creasey, director of state relations for the University of Illinois system, said the longer the budget stalemate goes on, the longer she’s forced to reuse the same talking points in Springfield.

She’s emphasized to legislators that her university, like many other institutions, had to cover absent payments for the state-funded Monetary Award Program, a grant for low-income students, and created research opportunities for students amid the budget crisis.

John Charles, director of governmental and public affairs for the Southern Illinois University system, said he’s also continued to tell lawmakers about SIU’s relationship with the state — how it provides jobs at its campuses and how it educates students from outside the state and within.

Still, Ms. Creasey said, the severity of the budget crisis hasn’t sunk in for some legislators because this past fall the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign enrolled its largest-ever freshman class, while the numbers dropped at other public colleges in the state. According to 10-day enrollment figures, 7,592 freshmen were enrolled at the flagship in the fall of 2016. It’s nonetheless unclear how much longer the university can operate with stopgap funds, she said. “Every time that the dates get pushed back it’s scarier,” she said.

Mr. Charles said he’s emphasized SIU’s historic relationship with the state, and like its peers, the university is continuing to serve students during the budget impasse. Now he wants lawmakers to uphold their end of the bargain and pass a budget, he said.

For Jeanette Malafa, assistant to the president for governmental relations at Western Illinois University, the budget stalemate has changed the nature of her day-to-day tasks. Her job has become much more advocacy-based, she said.

Since the budget has consumed most of the attention in Springfield, Ms. Malafa said her days are filled with telling the university’s story like a grass-roots organization and helping Western Illinois build a coalition to help fund higher ed.

Instead of monitoring bills in the statehouse, she’s begun continuously telling legislators why funding Western Illinois is important, not just to the college, but to the state’s economy, she said.

“I’ve shifted more from, We like this idea, or philosophical idea, about a piece of legislation. It’s less of that and it’s more of, This is who we are, and this is why we matter,” Ms. Malafa said. “The conversation has changed.”

A new deadline

Every few months there’s a glimmer of hope during the legislative session that a budget will finally pass, said Mr. Lackland of Illinois State.

When the statehouse prepared for a veto session in June, Mr. Lackland said, some government-relations administrators were hopeful for a new budget. During the six-day veto session, Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, can either veto bills or use his powers to recommend changes to a bill after it has been passed in the General Assembly, according to the Illinois Constitution. Ultimately, legislators and the governor didn’t budge. During November’s general election, Mr. Lackland said, he thought turnover among legislators might end the gridlock. But again, no luck.

He’s holding out hope for the lame-duck session, but every missed deadline creates a crisis of confidence among students and parents. Potential and current students are unsure what the stalemate means for their majors, tuition dollars, and grant funding, he said. And every semester, people are less confident that public colleges in Illinois can survive and cover the shortfall for much longer.

Maureen Kelly, director of government and community relations at Governor’s State University, said that during the budget gridlock she’s maintained the mind-set that absent passage of a budget, if colleges can at least get stopgap funding for another semester she can focus on the next legislative deadline.

Still, it’s hard to be optimistic. If a college has an unforeseen cost to take care of, like a pipe burst, Ms. Kelly said she doesn’t know what will happen.

“I’ve lost hope,” Ms. Kelly said. “It’s been really difficult on so many fronts when you know the value that higher education brings to the economy, to individuals, to families, and just to see it being handicapped and the disinvestment that’s taking place. It just seems counterintuitive to everything that the state is hoping to succeed with.”

As the state goes into another calendar year without a full budget and public universities survive under stopgap funding, Western Illinois’s Ms. Malafa said nothing surprises her anymore, especially how long the state has survived without a full budget.

“It continues to be a time of firsts,” she said. “Everyone always has hope, right, that something is going to happen at the end of the fiscal year or something is going to happen after the election. Again though, I have hope that we will get a full budget by the end of this fiscal year. And I’m being serious. That’s my hope.”

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a web writer. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.