Schaumburg’s Larson angered by income tax plan

For Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson, the fact the struggling economy is no longer the village’s biggest problem is not coming as the good news he might have expected it to be.

While the economy truly does seem to be on the mend — helping Schaumburg officials move closer to their goal of reducing or even eliminating the village’s new property tax — that trend could be undermined by Illinois legislators’ plans to reduce some or all of municipalities’ share of the state income tax.

“The actions of the state of Illinois are now the biggest threat to local government,” said Larson, who earlier this week was sworn in for a seventh term as mayor. “I find it ironic that people who can’t manage their own affairs want to manage ours.”

While protests of the proposed plan have been on the lips of many suburban leaders, few have made the argument as forcefully as those in Schaumburg — who stand to lose up to $6 million a year.

“Six million dollars — that’s something we can’t absorb without cutting services drastically or raising revenues,” Schaumburg Village Manager Ken Fritz said. “Six million dollars to us is so big that there’s no way we could reduce the property tax.”

During its recent budget discussions, the village board predicted it could reduce its next property tax levy by 4 percent ... if everything stayed on its current course.

The uncertainty over the proposed cuts centers not only on whether it will happen, but on how much of the income tax state leaders will really try to take back.

“It’s hard to pin down what they’re really talking about,” Fritz said.

And the current discussion is just the latest in a long line of frustrations local governments have felt from having their operations driven more and more by state legislators and the organized labor lobby, Fritz added. These include such concerns as pension and workers’ compensation costs.

“There’s a lot of local government issues that should be left to local government and not taken over by the state,” Fritz said. “At some point we’re going to have to give them the keys and tell them, ‘You figure it out.’ The system really has to change.”

Larson said all the suburban leaders who have been raising their voices over the past several weeks are still waiting for Chicago to step up and say something. Chicago would be affected severely by the plan and has the clout for its concerns to be taken seriously by state legislators, he said.

But that clout might also create the possibility of Chicago cutting a separate deal with the state and having the plan operate on a two-tier system as has happened before, Fritz said.

While Schaumburg’s own state legislators seem to understand the concerns, their sympathy alone isn’t enough to avert the potential problem, he added.

Just as when the economy was in a tailspin, Schaumburg once again finds its fate largely dependent on outside forces, Larson said. But unlike dealing with faceless market forces, he hopes efforts to persuade a group of human beings in Springfield might avert what he sees as the next potential crisis.

“Hopefully common sense will prevail,” Larson said.