Cash Reserves Exhausted, Hispanic Drug Treatment Agency Closure Looms

Illinois’ budget impasse is driving a suburban non-for-profit substance abuse treatment agency, which serves mostly Hispanic residents, to close all offices by July 1.

Without payment from the state on the $59,326 owed, the Elgin-based Latino Treatment Agency will begin to shut down two agency facilities by June 15 and the final office by July 1.

“Given the State’s inability to release the $59,326 owed to the Latino Treatment Agency from our state grant, we will be unable to provide services to our clients, mostly from the Hispanic community, if we do not receive these State funds by July 1,” said agency executive director Adriana Trino. “More than 160 clients will be terminated from services by July 1.”

Trino says that the agency, which has been in operation for more than 30-years, has cut salaries and exhausted bank lines of credit and cash reserves in order to maintain services to its 160 Hispanic clients spread through out Cook, DuPage, and Kane counties.

“We have cut our expenses; we have accumulated debt; and we have reduced salaries of every staff member,” Trino said. “We have exhausted cash reserves and our line of credit in order to remain afloat.”

The $59,326 owed to agency is on top of $60,690 cut from the group’s $273,008 budget by the Rauner Administration in August 2015.

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