The ongoing budget debacle that’s hobbled Illinois government was front and center today in Springfield. The "Budgeting for Results” commission is supposed to be hearing from the public about how state government can be more efficient.
But Vickie Smith is among several people who told commissioners that the state government workforce has gotten so small… it’s actually making things much LESS efficient.
“I was at a meeting yesterday with people from the Department of Children and Family Services charged with protecting the most vulnerable in our state. And they are so devastated… that it is extremely difficult for them even to get qualified people to apply, let alone get hired."
Smith is director of the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She says the state office overseeing hundreds of grants for agencies she represents — grants worth tens of millions of dollars — has the equivalent of one-and-a-half employees.
