December 26, 2016
Chicago Sun-Times
Editorial: Step on toes and get rid of silly little governments
When people run for public office, they always promise to make government more efficient and less expensive. Republican or Democrat, they say it every single time.
Then, if they win, they hope you forget they ever said it. Who? Me?
Making government more efficient and less expensive means stepping on toes. The abstract becomes specific. Jobs must be cut, budgets cut and fiefdoms wiped out. Most politicians, once elected, hate to step on toes.
Nobody should be surprised, then, that a plan hatched last summer to push the consolidation of redundant local government units, which is a particularly expensive problem in Illinois, is going nowhere. And it will continue to go nowhere unless the more principled elected officials and the public demand otherwise.
In July, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill passed in the Legislature with bipartisan support that requires every county board in Illinois to submit a report listing redundant units of local of government that could be dissolved or consolidated. Maybe, for example, there are two road districts where one would do. Or there’s a fire protection district that exists only on paper because they contract to get service from a nearby town. The county reports don’t require them to consolidate anything; it’s just a way to get everyone focused on the possibilities.
The deadline for those reports is Jan. 1. But as of last week, according to the bill’s Senate sponsor, Tom Cullerton, the only county that had filed a report was his own, DuPage. Maybe everybody else has been so bogged down with government waste and inefficiency, given all those dinky and pointless units of government, that they haven’t had time to comply with the state law.
A few days remain for a flurry of last-minute filing. Go to it, everybody.
The opportunities to save taxpayers money are real and substantial. Illinois has nearly 7,000 units of local government, far more than any other state. Our state has elected township assessors who don’t assess, local highway departments that have almost no highways and cemetery or water districts that you’d be shock to learn even exist. In Elgin, some residents are taxed by 16 different local government units.
Maybe we need another unit of government to hire accountants to help the poor people of Elgin figure out their tax bills.
Who knew, for example, that just outside Naperville for decades was the Century Hill Street Lighting District, which raised $17,000 a year in taxes to operate 77 streetlights? In June, the DuPage County Board dissolved it, turning over the assets and responsibilities to the county’s Division of Transportation, which should be able to do the job just fine - for less money.
DuPage officials say they’ve saved about $80 million over three years by getting local governmental units to share services. They’re also considering merging the DuPage Election Commission with the office of county clerk. In Cook County, voters decided on Nov. 8 to merge the recorder of deeds office into the county clerk’s office. In 2014, voters decided to dissolve Evanston Township, which had exactly the same borders as the City of Evanston.
We understand that taxpayers in some local government districts are happy with what they are getting and don’t mind paying for it. They might not want a consolidated park district, for example, if that mean a cut in services.
But myriad opportunities for consolidation and financial savings remain, without a reduction in service, among overlapping districts for mosquito-abatement, transit, schools, parks, libraries, waste-disposal, drainage, hospitals, fire protection, townships, municipalities, airports, lighting and sanitation.
Voters like the idea. In November, advisory referendums on consolidation passed in seven DuPage townships and one municipality.
All it takes is a willingness to step on toes.
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December 25, 2016
Rockford Register Star
Our View: Real budget could help keep people in Illinois
No one is surprised that Illinois lost more residents in 2016 than any other state. There’s been a lot of hand-wringing, shoulder shrugging and general angst that Illinois lost 37,508 people, which puts its population at the lowest it’s been in at least a decade.
That’s important information to have. So who’s going to do something about it?
The reasons people leave are no secret to Illinoisans: high taxes, the state budget stalemate, crime, the unemployment rate and the weather.
Nothing can be done about the weather, but those other four items can be fixed - or at least our lawmakers could TRY.
“People are leaving our state looking for more economic opportunity & a lower tax burden. We need to turn IL around,” Gov. Bruce Rauner tweeted last week.
The Illinois unemployment rate is 5.6 percent while the national average is 4.9 percent.
There are success stories on jobs. Amazon announced plans last week to open two distribution centers in Aurora, which will create employment for more than 1,000 people.
Amazon got help from the state in the form of an Edge tax credit worth $12.9 million over 10 years. However, the EDGE program is going to expire Dec. 31.
The Edge program, which started in 1999 under Gov. George Ryan, is credited with creating 34,000 jobs and retaining 46,000. How many potential jobs will Illinois lose if Edge expires?
Another jobs success story is here in Rockford. AAR Corp., a global leader in the aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul industry, has set up shop at Chicago Rockford International Airport and will bring 500 and perhaps as many as 1,000 jobs.
One of the reasons the deal was possible was because the state of Illinois promised $15 million for the project. Because of the lack of a budget, the state has not been able to pay. Five local banks stepped in to extend a $17 million line of credit to the Greater Rockford Airport Authority, ensuring the jet-repair hub would be completed on schedule.
The examples above show what a critical role the state of Illinois plays in attracting and retaining jobs.
If there were more jobs that paid well, fewer people would flee the state. If there were more jobs available, fewer people would turn to crime.
And, if more people are working and paying taxes, the tax base increases, decreasing the burden on everyone.
To make matters worse, some of the state’s best and brightest young people are deciding to pursue their educations in other states.
The Illinois Board of Higher Education reported that enrollment is dropping in all centers of higher education in Illinois - public universities, community colleges and private colleges.
Illinois State University and the three University of Illinois campuses showed slight increases; all other public schools declined by an average of almost 3 percent compared to last year.
Some lawmakers blame the state’s budget uncertainty for the decline. Public universities are operating under the stopgap budget that is set to expire at the end of the month. Funding for schools is uncertain after that.
Illinois’ population is expected to continue its decline. Illinois still is the fifth-most populous state in the U.S., but this was the third consecutive year in which Illinois was among the few states to lose residents. The Illinois population stands at 12,801,539.
Illinois’ population first began to drop in 2014 and that number more than tripled in 2015. The 2016 numbers just continued that bad trend.
If Illinois had a budget, perhaps the thousands who fled would have decided to stay. One way to find out is for lawmakers to adopt a budget as soon as possible and see whether that helps reverse the population trend.
If not, please let us know where the switch is so that we can turn out the lights when we’re the last to leave.
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December 24, 2016
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
Let’s see some ID
Sometimes little things can be big things.
Gov. Bruce Rauner signed bipartisan legislation this month that’s designed to make it easier for former prison inmates to make a smoother transition back into society.
It might seem like a small thing - but a valid identification card is only minor if one already has one. Many inmates don’t.
That’s why new legislation provides that the Secretary of State’s Office issue a standard identification card to those released from either adult or juvenile corrections facilities.
To qualify for a state ID card, recipients must present a birth certificate, Social Security card or some other form of identification.
Frankly, that ought not to be too hard to come up with. After all, our prisons presumably know who they’re holding.
Rauner acknowledged the IDs represent a “simple step” for the state to provide proper identification for parolees. He expressed the hope that the move “will help us end the cycle of recidivism and give former offenders more tools necessary to be successful.”
That, of course, is easier said than done. Most inmates wouldn’t be inmates if they had what it takes to be successful in the real world.
Many have drug, alcohol or mental health issues. They come from abusive homes and lack education. No wonder recidivism rates are so high.
Nonetheless, Rauner and legislators of both parties are committed to taking the steps necessary to move nonviolent inmates out of prisons and into society. The governor is committed to reducing the state’s prison population by 25 percent before 2025.
If that effort is going to be successful in a way that does not pose a safety threat to the public, many of society’s least successful people are going to have to make big changes in their lives.
That, naturally, will require an ID card, whether it’s to get a job or open a bank account.
One could ask, of course, why something so easy to do wasn’t done earlier. But at least it’s done now, and it’s on to the much harder stuff.
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December 21, 2016
The (Joliet) Herald-News
Our view: Budget deal would be great Christmas gift
The sentiment “Peace on Earth, good will toward all” doesn’t seem to apply to Illinois politics, does it? But in this season of Christmas, we believe it should.
Illinois state government needs a successor agreement to the half-year stopgap budget that took effect July 1 and will run out on Dec. 31.
While the stopgap budget funds K-12 schools through June 30, 2017, other major areas will soon be left out in the cold.
That is, if Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and leaders of the Democratic majority in the Legislature, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, don’t come to an agreement before the first of the year.
People who face domestic violence, have disabilities, need transportation to medical appointments, or simply need an education have come to rely on the state helping to pay for services, which will be threatened anew if a reliable source of funding isn’t forthcoming in two weeks.
We get it that Rauner and Madigan, who also is the state Democratic Party chairman, are bitter rivals. The governor, who took office in January 2015 with the slogan “Shake up Springfield; bring back Illinois,” might compromise and support an income tax increase -something we oppose - but only if the Democratic-controlled Legislature approves some of his “turnaround agenda” reforms.
Longtime leaders Madigan and Cullerton, who have been party to many legislative deals in the past, don’t want to agree to any of Rauner’s proposals.
Thus, there’s been no annual budget since July 1, 2015.
And now, the 12.8 million residents of Illinois must wait apprehensively for another deal, makeshift or otherwise, that will help state government to run better than it has.
If the spirit of Christmas won’t warm the cold hearts of our state leaders, what will?
We hope they finally see that treating budget victims with Scrooge-like indifference during protracted political standoffs does the public an incredible injustice.
A compromise budget agreement would go a long way toward warming hearts and boosting spirits across our state.
Governor, Mr. Speaker, and Mr. Senate President: In this season of hope and joy, it’s not an unreasonable request that you do your jobs and produce a new budget before the stopgap runs out.
Unless, of course, you believe that peace on earth and good will toward all don’t apply in your line of work.
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