Unpaid state debts starting to add up in Kane County
By the end of 2016, Kane County taxpayers may wind up paying more than $1 million worth of bills that would normally be covered by the state.
County board members are already on track to use county taxpayer dollars to fund child support enforcement efforts by the Kane County state's attorney's office. The state stopped funding the $700,000 annual cost of running the enforcement office last July. The lack of payment comes despite a legal contract state officials signed that makes the office's salary costs a state responsibility.
The county board's finance committee unanimously approved the establishment of an emergency loan from county coffers to shore up the office moving forward. The hope is the state will eventually make good on the debt. County officials, though, have not ruled out a lawsuit to recoup the funds.
If the matter heads to court, there may be at least two other delinquent state bills for which the county could seek restitution.
The state also hasn't paid out local health protection grant monies to Kane County since December 2014. The grant is awarded on a need-based formula that takes into account a county's population, per capita income and assessed property valuation. Those factors qualify the county health department for a grant worth $348,470.
The county can use the money to fund programs addressing infectious diseases, sanitary food and clean water protection and private sewage disposal. Barb Jeffers, the health department's executive director, is already cutting back on expenses and spending down cash reserves to address the shortfall. The debt already stands at nearly $180,000.
The third and oldest state debt to the county is reimbursement for the county engineer's salary. The county bases the engineer's salary off the recommended schedule established by the Illinois Association of County Engineers and the Illinois Department of Transportation. That's part of what makes the county eligible for up to a 50 percent reimbursement of the engineer's salary from the state. That $69,160 debt hasn't been paid since October 2014.
The money owed could actually be more. The engineer's base salary has increased to $161,159 since that 2014 payment. Half that would be $80,579. However, the county has never increased the reimbursement request following the salary increase.
Even without adding to the state's outstanding debt, the total bill will hit $1.12 million by the end of this fiscal year. That's an amount Kane County Board Chairman Chris Lauzen said the county can't afford.
"This really is quite a problem," Lauzen said. "The idea of a county being able to finance an operation that is paid by the state government, well, we just don't have those resources. If we don't have the money to pay for this it would be an error to cripple the total (operation) in order to take care of these individual items. You are taking the pressure off the state to fund these if (state lawmakers) can say we are just going to take care of it for them."