Letter: Poor comparison

A recent letter tried to make the point that Illinois has too many local government entities and used Texas in comparison. It stated that Texas had three types of local governments - county, municipal and special districts. Taking just a few minutes I was able to find the following detail.

The listed types of local governments seem to have come straight from Wikipedia - search for administrative divisions of "state." A similar search for Illinois yields, counties, townships, precincts, cities, towns, villages (each of the prior three are municipalities) and special-purpose districts.

At this level of detail, the comparison is now three to five versus the comparison in the letter.

Going a step further for Texas, you can find the following for Texas. Special purpose districts are governmental entities with specific geographic boundaries that are created to provide specific services such as drainage, water and sewer service or firefighting. Specific types of special districts in Texas include school districts, community college districts, municipal utility districts, hospital district as well as dozens of other types of special purpose districts.

Texas also has various types of precincts as well. For example, each county is required to have four commissioners precincts. Counties are also required to have one to eight tel. They also have County election precincts.

I am not trying to contradict the basic point in the letter that Illinois has too many local government types of units - I feel this is a valid point. However, the comparison used to make the point was an "apples to oranges" comparison and when an equivalent comparison is used, it fails to justify the point being made.

Sadly, people often just accept statements without questioning the "stated facts," which happens far too often, rather than doing a little research on their own.

Wilfred Hegg

Palatine