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Official: Fewer traffic tickets contribute to Kane County budget deficit

With an income shortfall in the circuit court clerk's office being the largest driver of Kane County's looming $6 million deficit for 2018, Tom Hartwell implicated a major drop in local traffic tickets causing the vanishing cash.

Numbers show a $3.75 million drop in the county's revenues coming in 2018. Nearly half that drop traces back to financial forecasts for Hartwell's office.

Hartwell said police all across the county are issuing far fewer traffic tickets, 40 percent less over the past seven years. The circuit court clerk's office gets a cut of fines for all traffic tickets.

“Traffic tickets are revenue generators because people pay them,” Hartwell said. “They want their license back. That's what it comes down to. But now those fees are not coming in. Justice isn't about numbers necessarily, but when we're talking about dollars it is.”

Also cutting into that ticket revenue is the establishment of local adjudication hearings, allowing municipalities to keep more ticket money. At the same time, the county still provides judges, court security and courtrooms for some of those hearings, representing a cost with no reimbursement.

“We are essentially providing all that for free,” said John Hoscheit, chairman of the county's finance committee.

Hartwell's office will also collect up to $450,000 less in bond fees. The circuit court clerk gets a cut of any bond imposed on criminal case defendants, but there is a statewide push to reduce bond for nonviolent offenders who can't afford it. The idea is people shouldn't sit in jail if they don't pose a threat just because they are poorer than people who can pay the bond.

Budget committee members didn't have an immediate solution for funding losses. But income isn't the problem. Some budget requests from departments also include new spending, despite a directive to keep budgets flat.

Coroner Rob Russell's 2018 budget calls for a 17 percent spending increase. In real dollars, that's only $154,000, or about 1 percent of the judicial and public safety departments' expenses. Some of the increase relates to the unionization of Russell's office and the accounting of a 13 percent total pay increase for his staff over 2011, the year the union members received retroactive raises to. Those employees, as well as all the county's unions, are due to negotiate new contracts heading into 2018.

The budget committee is scheduled to meet two more times this week.

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