Mental health advocates in Chicago and across the state are watching the General Assembly carefully as it debates several measures that would bring millions in tax dollars to cash-starved clinics.

Of particular interest are a non-binding resolution encouraging the state to ensure funds allocated for behavioral service aren't redirected to other activities, a bill requiring the state to make timely payments to community agencies and a bill upping sales tax on alcohol to fund mental health services.

All are expected to come up for votes before the General Assembly adjourns May 31.

If the legislation doesn't pass, "we would continue in the nose dive we've been in," says Suzanne Andriukaitis, executive director of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Greater Chicago. "The decline all has to do with funding. It has to do with the lack of available funding to provide services."

Tony Kopera, president of the Community Counseling Centers of Chicago, agrees.

"The mental health system is just in terrible shape because of the lack of support."

A study by the Springfield-based Community Behavioral Healthcare Association predicts that without the necessary funding, 17,000 adults and children will lose their mental health services on July 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year. Additionally, another 30,000 will have their services reduced.

It's a disturbing trend, Andriukaitis says, especially for Chicago, which has seen mental health services in the city plummet over the last 20 years. In April, a plan to close for South Side mental health centers was nixed after the state pledged federal stimulus dollars to keep them open.

Clinics "can't continue to provide that care without the dollars to pay their staff and provide the paper and pay the light bill and the phone bill," she says. "So they have no choice but to lay off people, to not fill positions.

"So what does that mean? It means they can serve fewer people who need care."

Kopera, whose agency has laid off about 90 people, mostly clinicians, in the last four years and is forced to turn away more than 200 people seeking help a month, says it's imperative the General Assembly pass the legislation. But, he says, getting money for mental health all depends on what kind of funding the state can procure.

"It's really a matter of is there going to be money enough to do it," he says.

Statewide, mental health providers say they're hamstrung by a billing system that does not work, gobbling up billing information, but not processing it correctly. Kopera says his organization is owed more than $500,000 by the state. Providers blame the issue on the software's developer, a Virginia company called Value Options. Value Options has said it is looking into the issue.