Don’t fix state at expense of towns

I would like to address the state’s attempt to either reduce or remove the Local Government Distributive Funds. These funds were provided to the local governments in return for a requirement not to levy local income taxes when the state implemented its income tax back in 1969.

In many communities, these funds provide more than 30 percent of the annual revenue to operate the municipality.

These funds are critical to most communities’ day-to-day operations, including police, fire and public works.

Communities have already tightened their belts in the past few years to deal with the difficult economy. Eliminating these funds by the state would, in most cases, result in even more drastic cuts to essential services.

A portion of our state legislators’ solution seems to attempt to solve our state’s economic woes by taking money from local governments and you, our taxpayers.

The state of Illinois continues to approve unfunded mandates, requirements and regulations that continue to burden local governments. They pass these rules and regulations which local governments must enforce and implement, but they provide no financial support to implement them. These include residential cross-connection water inspection, construction debris disposal regulations and increased pension benefits.

These regulations may be well intended, but their unknown costs become quite large and ultimately become the financial responsibility of you, the taxpayer, through your local government.

For the above mentioned reasons, I urge you to contact your state legislator and request that they do not balance the state’s budget by taking money from local governments that are already struggling and that have done their part to balance their budgets through severe belt-tightening.

Larry Keller

Village President

West Dundee