Kane County may lose $1 million on Quinn proposal

Kane County will see a major reduction in state revenue if Gov. Pat Quinn is successful in his call to slash the share of state income taxes distributed to local governments.

Quinn's budget plan scales back the amount of state income tax given to local governments from the current 10 percent to 7 percent. That represents a $300 million gutting of the amount of money local municipalities and counties receive from the state income tax.

Kane County Finance Director Cheryl Pattelli said the impact would be about a $1 million blow to the county's revenue stream. For comparison, it took Kane County almost all of 2009 to find a fix for an $817,000 budget shortfall in the sheriff's department.

"That's obviously a serious situation," said county board attorney Ken Shepro in summarizing the governor's budget proposal.

It's also a frustrating situation for county board member Phil Lewis. Lewis recently asked Pattelli to try and figure exactly how much income tax money county residents currently send to the state. The request was an effort to see if Kane gets any benefits of value that reflects the true amount of money local residents send to Springfield.

Pattelli told Lewis Monday that number is an impossible fact to dig out. Pattelli said she couldn't perform the calculation because there isn't a good way to separate the amount of income tax money sent to the state from the amount of income tax money residents receive in tax returns.

Even state officials couldn't tell Pattelli a good method to make the calculation.

Pattelli said if she had to guess, the county probably gets its fair share of money back in most of the taxes it sends to the state. Transportation dollars might be the only area where the county is obviously shorted.

"I'm unable to determine how the state decides, if it has a huge pile of money, what projects they're going to fund," Pattelli said. "But in my view, that's really the only area of revenue that we see where there may be some level of inequity."

Lewis encouraged Pattelli to keep trying. That request, and Pattelli's projections fell mostly on absent ears Monday. The county board slated meetings for the Public Service and Legislative committees, but neither had enough board members for a quorum.