Taxpayers lose out when state dollars fund local projects
A $250,000 grant for a lakefront pavilion in Highland Park. A $295,000 grant for decorative streetlights for eight blocks in Chicago’s Eighth Ward. A $70,000 grant to reconstruct an alley in Niles. A $96,000 grant for bleachers in Greenfield Community Unit District 10.
These projects were among the initiatives in SB 1221 that the Illinois General Assembly voted to approve on June 30, 2009. This 996-page bill, which became law (PA 96-0039) in July 2009, includes thousands of appropriations for specific organizations, including units of local government and private, non-profit organizations. Most of the projects listed in the law, including the projects referenced above, are worthy of support at some level of government (e.g., the park district, school district, and city and county levels), but few projects in the law merit state support.
When a city or village wants to undertake a major public works improvement project, it typically puts the question to voters through a referendum. If voters approve, the project is funded through higher property taxes that voters voluntarily impose on themselves. If voters reject the referendum, voters live with bumpier roads, an older library, etc.
P.A. 96-0039 is perhaps the most striking example of the General Assembly choosing “winners” and “losers” among Illinois communities and non-profit groups. Residents of municipalities that have approved higher property taxes through local referenda pay those property taxes, and they have a portion of their tax dollars (the interest on the Build Illinois bonds) funneled to other communities’ projects. All of this takes place without any public review of the merit of the thousands of projects named in the Public Act’s 996 pages.
Why should a resident who sacrificed perhaps a hundred dollars a year in higher property taxes for library, road, and school improvements in his or her community pay for improvements in a community where residents have made no such sacrifice, particularly when the community that is receiving a grant is affluent? It is one thing to fund sidewalk and street improvements that might not otherwise be paid for because of an impoverished community’s weak real estate tax base, but quite another to fund a lakefront pavilion in Highland Park, road improvements in Lake Forest, and park district improvements in any number of park districts in Chicago’s upper middle-class suburbs.
Such improvements should be paid for at the local level by the residents who benefit from them—not taxpayers across Illinois. If local voters wish to pay higher taxes to enjoy such improvements, they are free to do so. If they do not wish to pay for them through higher property taxes, they should not expect taxpayers 200 miles away in another corner of the state to fund their projects.
The second problem with P.A. 96-0039 is the process through which the grants were issued. Instead of being issued through a transparent process in which all schools, municipalities, park districts, community groups, and other groups had an opportunity to submit applications and make their case for state support, many of the appropriations in the bill were granted by legislators to the recipients of their choice.
Some communities received tens of thousands of dollars for street repaving and municipal facility renovations, for example, while many other communities received no such appropriation.
To make matters worse, some municipalities retain lobbyists—sometimes for $10,000, $20,000, or $30,000 per year—to lobby state legislators for more money. Yes, that’s right—taxpayer dollars are used to lobby state legislators for a greater share of taxpayer dollars. If the community receives a sizeable grant for infrastructure improvements, for example, the investment can pay off handsomely. Such an arrangement might be good for communities that hire lobbyists, for the lobbyists themselves, and for the firms for which they work, but taxpayers who live in communities not represented by lobbyists end up with a greater share of the costs and a smaller share of the benefits.
Illinois needs a transparent process that gives all communities—particularly high-poverty communities that are struggling economically—a fair opportunity to compete for limited state dollars for basic infrastructure improvements that they are unable to fund on their own. When political considerations move what ought to be a local project to the front of the state funding line, all Illinois residents lose out on the good government that they deserve.
To view all of the projects funded in Public Act 96-0039, visit the Illinois General Assembly’s Web site, http://www.ilga.gov/. Click the “Public Acts” link and scroll down to the link for P.A. 96-0039.
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