This article was written by Brian Costin, and featured in the Chicago Tribune on July 25, 2014.
This is in response to “Too many governments? Downstate has the biggest share; Sparsely populated, Republican-leaning counties rail at big government while supporting lots of little ones” (News, July, 20), by Tribune reporter Bob Secter.
Secter’s article loses sight of the reality of Illinois residents suffering from too many layers of local government and, consequently, the second-highest property tax rates in the nation.
In comparing counties by a “governments per capita” metric, Secter is incorrectly gauging the “efficiency” of local government based on population density. Population-dense areas, such as Cook County, will almost always rank as more “efficient” than rural areas.
A far more important metric is the layers of government per citizen.
The average Illinoisan lives in an area with at least six layers of local government, including county, township, municipality, both a primary- and secondary-level school district and a community college district. The number shoots up to 16 layers when you take into account special districts such as libraries, parks, fire protection districts and more.
Secter’s article also suggests Illinois residents don’t care much about the problem of too many local governments. The truth is that Illinois state law makes it incredibly difficult for residents to do anything about it in the first place.
For example, to consolidate townships, petitioners must collect two-and-a-half times more signatures than it takes to raise a statewide constitutional referendum in one-sixth of the time, a nearly impossible task.
Secter’s poor comparison of local governments in rural and urban counties belittles Illinoisans who deserve the opportunity to reform our byzantine local-government system through consolidation.
