How Taxpayers can Shrink the Massive Industry of Government in Illinois
via Chicago Tribune
“‘Obliging the government to control itself is what we are called upon to do today.’
—Illinois Supreme Court, striking down an attempt to curtail public employee pension benefits, May 8, 2015.
The official moniker of Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti’s study group is descriptive, accurate and wordy: ‘Task Force on Local Government Consolidation and Unfunded Mandates.’ The efficient title would be: ‘Because of the Pensions.’
There’s no news in the observation of Sanguinetti’s group that Illinois, with more units of government than any other state, collects enormous amounts of property tax to fund all those often redundant and otherwise useless bureaucracies. Now, though, there’s unarguable urgency for the recommendations that the lieutenant governor’s task force delivered Monday to Gov. Bruce Rauner:
The Illinois Supreme Court has all but declared that these governments, school districts included, are stuck with the spoiled fruit of state pension laws and their own giveaways to their employees. Because of their foolishness, local governments from Zion to Cairo are devolving into retirement benefits providers that sprinkle whatever money is left over on their shrinking services to taxpayers.”
Back