Tax collectors have trouble

Illinois tax collectors are having trouble balancing their own books. An audit found that the Department of Revenue wasn't paying attention to an account that reimburses cities for sales tax collections. Officials allowed the fund to run out of money in March 2007. The audit released Tuesday also found that Revenue officials falsified vouchers to hide the fact that they were prepaying bills for future fiscal years. Auditors say that's a violation of state law. Revenue officials said they didn't know pre-payments were illegal and said they have established a procedure to monitor sales taxes to prevent depletion of funds in the future.