On March 30, 2025, at 4:21 p.m. Gibson County Deputy Wes Baumgart observed a White Honda Sedan traveling at 101 mph on Interstate 69 near the 34 mile marker. Upon stopping the vehicle Deputy Baumgart observed that there were six passengers in the five seat vehicle. Deputy Baumgart requested additional units and began a roadside investigation. During the investigation Deputy Baumgart identified the driver as 20 year old Aniya Ivory of Glenn Heights, Texas and placed Ms. Ivory into custody for Reckless Driving. At the conclusion of the investigation Ms. Ivory was transported to the Gibson County Jail where she was charged with Possession of Marijuana, Neglect of Dependent, and Reckless Driving.
Assisting Deputy Baumgart in his investigation were Deputies Wyatt Hunt and Sgt. Loren Barchett.
All criminal defendants are to be presumed innocent until, and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Intellectual and developmental disability services brace for potential Medicaid cuts
Large proposed budget cuts on the federal level could impact disability services in Illinois
By ERIN DRUMM
Medill Illinois News Bureau
news@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD — Intellectual and developmental disability service organizations are bracing for potential cuts to Medicaid and Medicare from the federal government under congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump.
About 3.9 million Illinoisans are enrolled in Medicaid. Of that total, 44% of Medicaid recipients are children, 9% are seniors and 7% are adults with disabilities, according to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.
“We’re very concerned. We don’t see what the path is right now,” Illinois Association of Rehabilitation Facilities CEO Josh Evans CEO said. “And so our mission is to continue to educate our members of Congress that this is not just a program that is ripe with payments, it’s serving people.”
IARF is an association of community-based providers that serve children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and serious mental illnesses in Illinois. Community providers focus on inclusion in a smaller community that offers more independence when providing care and some community providers help their residents find employment.
“I'm going to do whatever it is that I can do, but I can't come up with $8 billion to keep a federal program going in my state,” Gov. JB Pritzker said in an interview with The Contrarian last week. “I can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try to provide free healthcare for people who are most acute, but people are going to die because of what they’re doing.”
Prtizker proposed increased funding in the developmental disabilities division at the Department of Human Services, DHS, in his proposed 2026 fiscal year budget. This would include funding to continue placements of individuals who qualify and want to live in community-based settings and for new placements under a 2011 federal court order the state has struggled to comply with.
Read more: Federal judge rejects Illinois’ bid to end court oversight of disability programs | Illinois faces backlash over bid to end oversight of disability services
The Ligas Consent Decree requires states to provide care options in integrated community settings for Illinoisans with intellectual and developmental disabilities who request community-based services.
Despite Trump’s claim that he would not make cuts to Medicaid, congressional Republicans’ budget resolution would almost certainly result in shrinking funding for the program.
Read more: Pritzker calls $55.2B budget ‘responsible and balanced’ – but warns Trump policies could upend it | State lawmakers brace for possible federal cuts to Medicaid
Trump has vowed not to cut Medicaid benefits, but he has also said his administration will go after “waste and fraud” and cited tens of billions of “improper payments” in entitlement spending as the target for trims.
“You need to be careful in terms of how you're looking at Medicaid, whether it's focused on ways you can try to eliminate fraud, abuse and improper payments, which we all support, by the way, (but) major substantive changes to Medicaid will have a downstream impact on disability services,” Evans said.
Service providers worry the budget cuts proposed in a United States House budget resolution could jeopardize access to medical care for people with disabilities in Illinois and across the United States who rely on Medicaid. The budget proposal calls for $2 trillion in budget cuts, making it likely that Medicaid and Medicare will be impacted, Evans said. All 14 Illinois Democratic House members of Illinois’ congressional delegation voted against the resolution.
“I think some people assume that the cut automatically equals cost savings, but that isn't necessarily the case,” said Kelly Berardelli, CEO of southwest suburban-based disabilities nonprofit Sertoma Star Services. “Just because the funding is cut doesn’t mean the need is gone, and a lot of people we serve are from the most vulnerable populations, so they’re going to still need services and supports.”
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Sertoma Star Services serves more than 1,500 children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the Chicago area and Northwest Indiana. The organization receives most of its funding from Medicaid, and many of the people using their services rely on Medicaid for access to care.
“Any cuts to Medicaid have the potential to reduce the quality of life for the people we serve,” Berardelli said.
Evans agreed.
“Disability services in Illinois are primarily exclusively funded through Medicaid,” he said. “There’s no private pay, there’s very little to no Medicare. It’s all Medicaid.”
If access to community-based care is slashed by Medicaid cuts, people will seek care through institutionalized facilities, which tend to be large facilities run by the state with a focus on medical care, or in some cases, be hospitalized. This could cause Illinois to further violate the Ligas Consent Decree.
According to Berardelli, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities living at home could lose access to respite care if Medicaid funding is decreased in Illinois. Respite care is temporary care from a professional who is not the recipient’s primary caregiver, which is usually a couple of hours in a day or week.
More than half of those who receive care from Sertoma Star Services live with a family member over the age of 55, making the threat to respite care particularly concerning, Berardelli said. If these people cannot get respite care, they may not be able to live at home and will have to be placed in institutionalized facilities, more full-time care away from home.
While some may seek placements at community providers, there are already long wait times and a shortage of community providers of care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“Cuts to Medicaid would, I think, inevitably increase that waiting list,” Berardelli said. “Progress has been made over the past several years, and we would definitely see that progress reversed if there were cuts to Medicaid.”
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Behavioral health services would also be impacted as Medicaid helps both to fund service providers in addition to insurance coverage for services such as mental health care and addiction treatment.
"The majority of our member organizations who provide behavioral health services are straight Medicaid,” IARF senior vice president of behavioral health policy and advocacy Emily Miller said. “Very few accept private insurance and so you would decimate the community with these drastic cuts that are being proposed to the Medicaid program."
Cutting federal funding would also cause many health industries to compete with one another for funding. If there is a more limited pool of funding for health provider programs, not every specialized program would get the funding they need.
In the state fiscal year that ended in June, Illinois received over $20 billion in federal Medicaid funding, which made up about 62% of the total funding for Medicaid programs in Illinois, according to HFS.
“If there’s a major change where we see a dramatic loss of dollars, that means we’re going to have to be lobbying against one another in the healthcare and human services space for a more limited amount of resources,” Evans said. “We cannot be put in that position.”
Erin Drumm is a graduate student in journalism with Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
Adults served by Sertoma Star Services having a creative outing at Tinley Park-based studio Hawaii Fluid Art during the summer of 2024. (Photo courtesy of Sertoma Star Services)
Tips To Prepare Before Storms Hit
As the likelihood of strong to severe storms impacting Illinois is a threat at any time of the year, Ameren Illinois has some reminders about what you can do to prepare. The company recommends creating or restocking the family's home emergency preparedness kit in preparation for the spring and summer storm season.
Plan ahead and organize items you may need in the event of a storm or emergency. Ameren Illinois spokesman Brian Bretsch says you should occasionally refresh the contents.
Bretsch says to make sure all family members know where the kit is located. He also suggests making sure cell phones are charged, cars and generators gassed up, and electronics unplugged from outlets.
Mt. Carmel City Council Agenda-Note Earlier Start Time
Meeting is Monday at 12pm.
Despite Trump order, Illinois won’t require voter proof of citizenship
April 1 elections being conducted under existing state, federal law
By PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois
phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois voters casting ballots in the April 1 consolidated elections will not be required to show proof of U.S. citizenship, despite an executive order issued this week by President Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, March 25, Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to implement and enforce a nationwide requirement that voters show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when they register to vote.
Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections, said in an email Thursday that under existing federal law, known as the National Voter Registration Act, voters only need to sign a sworn statement on their voter registration application that they are a U.S. citizen. He also said Illinois does not require voters to show any type of photo ID at the polls.
Among other things, Trump’s executive order directs the federal Election Assistance Commission to amend the federal voter registration form to include a space in which state or local officials are to record the type of citizenship document the applicant provides.
It also directs the commission to withhold federal election funds from states that refuse to accept federal registration forms containing the proof of citizenship information.
The executive order limits the types of acceptable documents to U.S. passports, state-issued driver’s licenses or identification cards that are compliant with the federal REAL ID Act, official military ID cards that indicate the applicant is a U.S. citizen, or a valid state or federal government-issued photo ID that indicates the applicant is a U.S. citizen.
It also directs the Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to review each state’s publicly available voter registration list, alongside federal immigration databases and state records to determine whether they are consistent with federal requirements that prohibit noncitizens from voting.
David Becker, an election law expert and director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said during a media briefing Thursday that he doubts the executive order will withstand an almost certain legal challenge because it goes beyond a president’s constitutional authority.
He pointed to Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives states the power to determine the time, places and manner of holding elections, “but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of (choosing) Senators.”
“What we have here is an executive power grab, an attempt by the president of the United States to dictate to states how they run elections, to dictate to them how they should exercise the power that is granted to them by the Constitution and to bypass Congress in doing so,” he said.
Since Trump’s first election in 2016, when he won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump has repeated baseless claims that large numbers of noncitizens are voting illegally in U.S. elections.
Shortly after taking office for the first time in 2017, Trump formed the short-lived Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to review claims of voter fraud, improper registration and voter suppression. But the commission disbanded in less than a year amid a flurry of lawsuits and pushback from states, including Illinois, over access to their voter registration lists.
Illinois law at that time prohibited the release of “any portion” of the state’s complete, centralized voter registration database to anyone other than state or local political committees or “a government entity for a governmental purpose.”
Dietrich said the state board has since begun making available to the public an abridged voter registration database that does not include voters’ complete home addresses.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
People voting in Springfield during the 2024 general election in November. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Campbell)
WGH Reaping Benefits Of "Grow Your Own" Program
This month’s Wabash General Hospital Foundation’s Soiree added more than $100,000 to the medical scholarship program. At last Wednesday’s WGH Board of Directors meeting, hospital president/CEO Karissa Turner said the Soiree was another example of how popular the grow your own program is…
Expanded Convenient Care Show Promising Early Results For WGH
It's been a little more than a month since Wabash General Hospital’s convenient care began offering expanded hours. And even though it’s a brief sample size, WGH President/CEO Karissa Turner told hospital board members that early results are promising…
The newly renovated convenient care at Wabash General is open weekdays 10 am to 8pm and weekends 8am to 6pm.
MFT Spending Approved By City Council
The Mt. Carmel City Council has approved spending over $300,000 from the city’s motor fuel tax fund. At their meeting last week, city engineer Dave Dallas laid out what the $319,831 will be used for…
Sheriff Warns Of Increase In Car/Deer Crashes
Each fall, drivers are warned about watching for an increase in deer crossing local roadways causing a spike in collisions with vehicles. But, Wabash County Sheriff Derek Morgan reported at the recent County Board meeting that drivers need to watch for deer now. He said there’s been a recent increase in the number of car-deer crashes in Wabash County.
Bloomington woman arrested for Reckless Driving
On March 26, 2025, at 6:12 p.m. Gibson County Sgt. Loren Barchett conducted a traffic stop on a Black 2024 Chevy Malibu after clocking it traveling 106 mph in a 70 mph zone on Interstate 69 near the 31 mile marker. Upon approaching the vehicle Sgt. Barchett identified the driver as 21 year old Carissa Moore of Bloomington. After a brief investigation Ms. Moore was taken into custody and transported to the Gibson County Jail where she was charged with Reckless Driving.
Assisting Sgt. Barchett in his investigation was Deputy Shawn Holmes.
All criminal defendants are to be presumed innocent until, and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
