State nearly a year behind in payments owed to Kane County

If money owed to Kane County's general fund were child support payments, the state of Illinois would be a deadbeat.

As of April 7 the state is about $3.6 million behind in various payments it owes the county. All of that money goes to the general fund, the account from which the majority of bills are paid. In any given year, state funds are responsible for about 28 percent of the income that flows into the county's general fund. Last year, that amount totaled about $21 million.

That total from 2009 may have been higher, but some of the state's unpaid debts to the county stretch back as far as May 2009. That's the last time Kane County received any payments from the state to reimburse salaries in the public defender's and state's attorney's offices. That debt alone is about $360,000.

The largest outstanding tab is more than $2 million in state reimbursements for probation department employee salaries. Right behind that is nearly $1.2 million of income tax money the state has yet to send. That pain may serve as a preview to Gov. Pat Quinn's call to cut the local share of income tax money by 30 percent.

"When we have a revenue that's completely dried up that we were expecting on a monthly basis, we have to come up with the revenue someplace else," Finance Director Cheryl Pattelli said.

Kane County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay informed board members Tuesday that "someplace else" has been the county's cash reserves.

But that can't go on forever. Pattelli said she thinks the county has enough reserves to cover about $1.5 million of the delinquent payments, but only if the county doesn't have to tap into the reserves for anything else, and that some of the money the state owes is actually paid this fiscal year.

"My main concern right now would be those reimbursements," Pattelli said. "It's pretty significant. We're very behind in that area."

Pattelli presented the information at the county board's Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday at which only 11 of the 26 board members were present. It was not the first meeting in recent months that failed to attract enough elected officials for a quorum, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by McConnaughay.

"We have had increasing problems getting a quorum," she said. "I'm sick and tired of people complaining that they can't get enough information, but they can't get to a meeting. We don't think it's too much to ask if you can't make it to a meeting, call and tell us that.

"I heard a bunch of people campaigning for office who said they didn't know anything about the budget. Let's all remember that when we get down the road with budgets and board members complain that they weren't allowed to be part of the process."