The Wednesday speech in which Gov. Rod Blagojevich proposed a tightfisted state budget lasted more than an hour. You only needed to hear the first few minutes, though, to catch his central themes. To paraphrase:
I know many citizens don’t trust government to spend their tax money wisely. Given that under my predecessor this fine capital city of Springfield should have been renamed Spendthrift, I don’t blame them. We simply can’t impose higher sales or income taxes on people who distrust us. We have to prove that we are worthy stewards. We have to restructure state government–and fiercely limit what it spends. I want those of us who collect tax money to treat it as carefully as if it were our own. It is not.
Blagojevich is on to something, and it doesn’t apply only to the public’s anger with state government. As tough economic times continue to squeeze many families, an anti-tax sentiment is simmering in parts of Illinois. Blagojevich has heard from his Chicago neighbors–even, he says, from his spouse–about property tax increases chronically outpacing inflation. He’d be more welcome at the next block party if all the big and little local governments that milk his neighbors for property taxes would live by the themes he articulated in his budget address.
Blagojevich isn’t just governor of the Prairie State. He’s governor of the Government State. The U.S. Bureau of the Census–which counts many things other than people–says Illinois has 6,904 units of government, more than any other state. Pennsylvania is second with 5,032.
Hmmm. We Illinoisans support almost 7,000 governments, most of which levy taxes. And we wonder why our property taxes are high. Let’s all scratch our scalps over that brain-teaser.
Some of those governments–numerous municipalities, for example–ably provide police and other vital services. Yet many other governments–obsolete townships, tiny sewer districts that should merge into larger ones, mosquito abatement and other so-called special districts–do not. In the 21st Century, taxpayers are supporting a vast architecture of Illinois governments engineered for the needs of the 19th.
Downsizing and dismantling some of this arcane and costly architecture should make heroes of those who lead the charge. Blagojevich is on record: Through consolidation and frugality, his budget would further shrink the number of state agencies and hold down state employment. Many of these initiatives come from his budget director, John Filan, who is infusing businesslike values of the private sector into a Statehouse culture that’s never been called economical.
If Blagojevich and Filan are looking for a like-minded zealot to streamline Illinois, they have one in Michael Quigley, a member of the Cook County Board who has developed a long list of detailed proposals to streamline Illinois. With help from three Democratic state senators–John Cullerton and Edward Maloney of Chicago and Don Harmon of Oak Park–Quigley has crafted a package of legislation that would:
– Kill a suburban tuberculosis district whose patients can be treated elsewhere at less cost.
– Combine the property tax functions of five Cook County offices into a single Office of Tax Administration–with one official accountable.
– Transfer to municipalities the county’s inefficient animal control and liquor control functions–a first step toward getting many such far-flung activities (road maintenance, zoning, police patrols now done by sheriff’s officers) into the hands of neighboring communities.
Quigley needs sponsors in Springfield for more such proposals: to merge Cook County’s clerk and recorder offices; to combine small sanitary districts; to eliminate the state’s 1,400 unneeded township governments, and so on. Maybe there was a time when all these artifacts made sense. Today’s taxpayers cannot afford them.
Quigley’s mantra echoes Blagojevich and Filan: If we were building Illinois government from scratch, how would we structure it for today and tomorrow? For pols and public officials battered by complaints about high taxes, demanding action on that question is a sure winner.
