Sponsors:	The Chicago Bar Foundation Illinois Legal Aid Online
Date:	Thursday, December 10, 2009
Time:	12:15 PM - 01:30 PM
Speakers:	Dan Lesser – Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law Phil Milsk – Law Offices of Phil Milsk, Springfield, IL Larry Suffredin – Legislative Counsel, The Chicago Bar Association

Understanding the Issues in Illinois’ Budget: Important Background for Members of Chicago’s Legal Aid Community

Legal aid attorneys and organization care first and foremost about providing access to justice particularly for those low-income and disadvantaged who are in the most critical need of the protections of our civil legal system. Ideally, legal aid attorneys could focus on providing these services, but realistically the funding of these services (as well as social services for their clients) is what enables them to do their work. Illinois faces significant budgetary hurdles, and legal aid organizations like other nonprofits have been affected. Because legal aid organizations cannot avoid the impact of these issues, it is incumbent on them to be informed about the nature and scope of Illinois’ budgetary challenges.

The panel of this training provides information about state budgeting in general, the current status of the Illinois’ budget with a perspective of how it fits within the fifty state landscape as set out in the Pew Report, Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril, how Illinois got to this situation as well as about some executive, legislative, litigation and advocacy initiatives that have been taken or are proposed to respond to the budget crisis.

Attachments

Click on the link(s) below to open the attached files.
File Name	Type	Size
Pew BeyondCalifornia.pdf	PDF	2.4MB
Tribune Nov 8 Editorial.doc	DOC	27.1KB
Lesser - Responsible Budget Coalition.doc	DOC	27.6KB
Lesser- state budget handout.doc	DOC	24.1KB

Last Updated: 12/18/2009