ROCKFORD, Ill. (WIFR) – A local facility that helps people with intellectual and developmental disabilities joins a fight to get more state funding for similar centers across Illinois.

According to John Pingo, CEO of the Goldie B. Floberg Center in Rockton, disability service providers have suffered years of underfunding from the state of Illinois.

Pingo hopes this years budget is different.

Candy Lenz, who works at the center, says it is one of many facilities dealing with staff shortages that grew worse through the pandemic. “I spend more time with these guys than I do with any anybody else,” says Lenz. She knows first hand the impact that having not enough hands to help patients or co-workers. Something Pingo hopes to fix.

“It morally not right that you pay a direct support professional who is helping a person with intellectual developmental disabilities build a life of dignity and empowerment that you pay them the same as someone who’s building your hamburger at a fast food restaurant, " says Pingo.

The ratio of providers to patients used to be 4 to 1, now it’s more like six to 1 ratio.

“We had to close down six of our homes and increase the number of people living in our homes which is the complete opposite direction of what we want to be going in,” says Pingo. He says in 2019 the Goldie Floberg Center operated nearly 21 homes but was forced to close six of them during the pandemic.

As of right now there are 14,000 people across the state waiting to get into a rehabilitation center for those with intellectual or developmental disabilities.

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