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Op-Ed: Illinois should make it easier to
clean out 6,000 government units it’s outgrown
[The Center Square] Brad Weisenstein |
Illinois Policy Institute
Illinois is sort of like
that spouse with bursting dresser drawers because all those old T-shirts
and jeans hold favorite memories or once fit oh-so-well. But the
outdated items for our state are little government units – we’ve got
more than 6,000 of them, not counting school districts – and the
wardrobe is about to collapse. |
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 It’s time to ask: What do we really need and what can we do
without?
Do we really need a township that sits atop the city boundaries? Do we need
special government units to attack mosquitoes, clear ditches or pay the
streetlight bill?
These government units were once valuable solutions to 19th century problems,
when time and distance were measured by horse-drawn vehicles. But now they are
mainly duplication, often irrelevant and too often job sources and pension plans
for reprobate brothers-in-law.
All of that nostalgia conspires to help push Illinois to No. 2
for highest property taxes in the nation. And it’s kind of crazy to keep 6,000
of something when that means you have 1,000 more than neighbors Indiana, Iowa
and Kentucky combined.
Right now, getting rid of the excess is daunting. Belleville Township is Exhibit
A.
Belleville Township once collected $10 in taxes for every $1 it handed out,
mainly as gift cards to 10 needy folks a week who met specific criteria. It took
six employees, a building and about $550,000 a year in taxes to perform this one
function for a government layer with boundaries exactly matching the city of
Belleville.
Seems like a no-brainer for elimination: someone at City Hall could hand out 10
gift cards a week in less time than it takes for a coffee break. The effort to
end this embarrassment started in 2012, but Illinois has 40 pages explaining its
statutes for changing government structures.
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Five years, a state law and a few million extra in
property taxes later, Belleville Township was gone thanks to some
dedicated and hard-headed residents. That same process is needed for
the remaining 17 townships that mirror cities, and for the 1,400
total townships in Illinois that are notorious for corruption and
whose retirees cost nearly $300 million in pension benefits over 20
years.
It shouldn’t be that hard. State lawmakers have a
chance to let Illinoisans clean out the government that no longer
fits.
Illinois House Bill 5276 would let local voters more easily petition
for a ballot referendum to dissolve a unit of government, giving
citizens direct control over how many layers of government they
want. It simplifies those 40 pages of instructions, following the
recommendations of a bipartisan task force that looked at the
problem in 2016 and saw little reason all those little governments
couldn’t be rolled up into cities or counties to cut duplication and
overhead.
Instead of making reformers get petition signatures
equivalent to 10% of the voters in the last general election, it
drops the threshold to 5%. It lays out rules ensuring voters in all
affected areas approve of dissolutions or consolidations, and for
how responsibilities and property are transferred after approval.
You might get a little misty over giving up that Van Halen T-shirt,
but get rid of a government layer in Illinois and the taxes you save
will have you dancing in the street.
Brad Weisenstein is editor at the Illinois Policy
Institute, a nonpartisan research organization.
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