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President Plans to Block Community Block Grants

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President Obama’s proposal to cut community block grants by 7.5 percent next year has Maureen “Mo” Hart worried. The executive director of Project NOW Inc. doesn’t know how her agency will continue to help its 38,000 clients.

“I’m not sure how we’re going to do it,” she said. “It’s something that we’ve got to figure out.”

Project NOW Inc. is a community action agency that works to eliminate poverty in low-income areas throughout Illinois. It helps senior citizens and others to pay utility bills, rent property, get affordable housing, and save on heating and cooling costs.

Hart said hundreds of agencies like hers depend on community service block grants, so $300 million in total cuts would be a “definite hit” to agencies and communities around the state.

Community service block grants are federal funds allocated to organizations and community action agencies and associations in 31 states. In Illinois, 102 counties and the city of Chicago receive community service block grants. They help to develop low-income communities by providing money for special programs in housing, health, transportation, education and many other programs Hart said every disadvantaged community needs.

“All of the community action agencies are in a similar position here, we’re all looking at potential cuts,” she said.

For now, Dalitso Sulamoyo, president and CEO of the Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies, is compiling a statewide impact analysis to find out how much money each agency will lose.

Maureen Hart’s Rock Island-based community action agency received $507,000 of the $15 million in community service block grant funds Illinois received for 2011. In years past, Hart said the agency received more money.

The blow will come to Hart’s agency only three years after Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a law designed to stabilize the economy by providing more money to community action agencies to provide more jobs while improving low-income communities. As a result of the act, in 2009 and 2010 Project NOW Inc. received $450,000 to $500,000 in block grants plus additional funds.

Hart said she understands there have to be cuts in the federal budget overall, but the wrong program is suffering. She said there are major areas of the budget where there is excess spending, but community action is not one of those areas.

The Galesburg–based Carver Community Action Agency provides educational scholarships, affordable housing, economic development with on the job training, and a loan program with its community service block grants. In 2010 and 2011, it received $134,246 in block grants. In 2009, it received over $202,000.

The agency’s program manager, Steve Day-Kaufman, said families have been benefiting from programs through community service budget grants for years. It’s a unique program that’s a necessity for communities because the money is used to develop programs the community vocalized a need for, Day-Kaufman said. He also said agencies that serve one county, like his, will be devastated, but it will be worse for agencies that cover over nine counties.

Debra Walker Johnson, vice president of marketing and development for National Able Network, a non-profit agency that provides employment training, said the lack of funds will prevent her agency from doing its job.

In 2009 National Able Network received $217, 666 in block grant money.

On average, it serves an estimated 50,000 clients a year. Walker Johnson said her agency, like all the others, is waiting on results from the Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies. But, under a 7.5 percent cut, its client base is likely to decrease substantially.

“It will impact our ability to deliver job training to Chicago residents and veterans,” she said.

She also said there are already hundreds of people looking for jobs, and with a cut as severe as $300 million, the people who help provide jobs will end up alongside their clients.

Hart said that instead of taking money away from community block grants, more money needs to go toward these programs. She’s preparing for the cuts, but insists there should be more funds for community development.

“In reality it needs to be increased,” she said.

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