Mayors Want Pritzker to Reverse Course on Local Government Cuts
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering is one of a group of mayors across the state asking Governor JB Pritzker to change course on his budget proposal which cuts more than $100 million from local government funding from the state.
Figuring out a budget to get the state of Illinois back on track financially would be a Herculean task under the best of circumstances. Factor in a pandemic and the job became much more difficult.
Mayors from around state want Governor JB Pritzker and the General Assembly to stop using money set aside for local municipalities to help balance the state’s budget.
“We don’t have other revenue sources and raising property taxes is a non-starter,” said Hazel Crest Mayor Vernard Alsberry Jr. “Every taxpayer thinks they pay too much in property taxes but the south suburbs of Chicago, Cook County, has the highest tax rate in the country. Residents and businesses literally cannot afford future increases during these challenging and uncertain times.”
The Local Government Distributive Fund (LGDF) was set up as a pass-through from the state to local governments in 1969. The state would take ten percent of the Illinois income tax people paid and send it back to the municipality where they live. That ten percent was cut to a little more than six percent a decade ago. Now Governor Pritzker has proposed cutting even more to help the state during the pandemic. His cuts, if enacted, would eliminate about $100 million in funding from local governments in the next budget.
“We haven’t seen ten percent in ten years,” said Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering. “That’s an annual shortfall in my city of $2 million and another $323,000 will be shaved off with the Governor’s proposal. Those millions of dollars can fix water mains and roads. They can help us mitigate ongoing flooding which annually threatens our residents and businesses. They can support public safety. They can help us hire back some of the 27 [full-time employees] we in Highland Park had to let go in the past year.”
The money coming back to local communities from the state can make up between ten and 20 percent of municipal budgets according to the mayors on a Zoom news conference. The mayors of Palos Hills, Bartlett, Geneva, Fox Lake, Cary, Elmhurst, Hazel Crest and Highland Park joined together to put pressure on lawmakers to leave local funding alone.
While the state must make up for more than a billion dollars in lost revenue during the pandemic, the mayors said cities aren’t faring any better.
“You’re taking from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes,” said Gerald Bennett, the longtime mayor of southwest suburban Palos Hills. “We all represent the same people. We’re in the same boat. It’s the same citizens that elect you that elect us. We need to continue and certainly to work toward a partnership to understand local governments support the revenues of this state and without it the state wouldn’t have money themselves.”
The Governor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Michael Zalewski (D-Riverside) chairs the House Finance and Revenue Committee and works closely on tax and budget issues. He said he understood the LGDF was a sensitive topic for mayors.
“It doesn’t surprise me they’re being vocal about trying to protect it,” Zalewski said. “We usually down here do everything we can to avoid upsetting local mayors, including protecting LGDF. My sense is this year will be no exception, but budget negotiations are ongoing and we’re trying to figure it all out.”
Zalewski said the Pritzker administration gave lawmakers a heads up that more cuts to the LGDF would be part of the governor’s budget proposal, knowing it would not go over well.
“The frustrating part of the conversations with the mayors is they tend to hit the panic button sometimes to a degree that makes things unnecessarily complicated,” he said. “We have plenty of state reps down here and state senators who understand the plight of local government. We want to make sure that we can get them every bit of help we can get our hands on.”
He said state lawmakers have been meeting twice a week working out the details of the next budget and whether more money would be diverted from local municipalities to the state’s coffers. Zalewski said part of the holdup was waiting for money from Washington.
“There’s cautious optimism,” he said about federal stimulus funds easing the burden on state and local communities. “There’s no check in the bank right now so, until there is, we’re not going to celebrate. We’re going to continue to do our normal due diligence on budget items. If the money comes in, that’s great. For now, we’re going to act like nothing is coming from the federal government because that’s the most conservative approach to take.”
The local mayors took this issue one step farther. They not only don’t want to take another haircut, they want the local funding from the state to go back up to ten percent, where it was when the LGDF was created in the first place.
“Those (delayed) infrastructure projects are still needed,” Rotering said. “Staff is still stretched. Several additional unfunded mandates are up for consideration this session in the General Assembly and more money is proposed to come off of our bottom line. The math equation is getting worse. We need to LGDF to be restored to its original level, not reduced again.”
With the state facing increasing pension mandates and shrinking budgets, many of the mayors said something has to give. Illinois will undoubtedly have to make difficult decisions to get its proverbial fiscal house in order, but the group of mayors don’t want hits to come at their expense.
“Stop pickpocketing the communities that you represent,” said Geneva Mayor Kevin Burns. “If you could also reconsider the elimination of the LGDF [cuts], restore it to its original glory so we can continue to build upon the partnership we started 52 years ago.”