A Township Government Courts Abolition

by Cal Sklnner

“This is nothing, absolutely nothing,”

Northwest Herald reporter Amber Krosel quotes newly-sworn in Grafton Township Trustee Gerry McMahon at Thursday night's meeting.

This was the same day that McMahon and his fellow trustees were given their third McHenry County Court smackdown concerning their illegal attempts to build a new township building.

McMahon was giving a lecture about how insignificant the taxpayer meerkat's (the original title of this series was "The Skunk, the Meerkats and the Elephant") concern about paying for the over $5 million new township hall the township trustees are trying to shove down their throats.

The cost was so small.

It was like comparing a meerkat to an elephant.

That's what McMahon argued.

What McMahon just can't comprehend is that the meerkat taxpayers might just want to be asked their permission before being put in debt for $5 million.

The "trust me" argument from public officials went out of style with President Jimmy Carter.

President Ronald Reagan brought the "trust, but verify" method of dealing with the Soviet Union.

Ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich and other crooked and arrogant Illinois state and local officials have brought citizens to the stage of

"Why should we trust you?"

The surface reason for issuing the over $5 million in debt is that current township facilities are inadequate.

But the real reason is that if the township board even doesn't take as much money as it can get, it forever will lose whatever that stream of income is.

It's a function of the tax cap, which allows local governments to take from us what they got last year, plus the increase in the cost of living.

If a district ever takes less than the maximum allowed, its “base” is lower for the next year and every year thereafter.

Oh how I wish there were more public officials who did not adhere to the

“Tax to the Max”

philosophy.

Township Assessor Bill Ottley gave me this insight after the annual town meeting while inquiring why I, who lives right across the township line in Algonquin Township, cared about what Grafton Township was doing.

Proponents of the debt certificate financing scheme the township trustees are trying to put in place argue that taxes will not go up.

What they mean is that tax bills will remain the same. They won't be higher than they already are.

There most certainly will be more taxes extracted from Grafton Township taxpayers.

You can't pay back more than $5 million without someone's pocketbook being lighter than it would be without bearing that burden.

But, proponents keep arguing,

“Taxes won't go up.”

Daily Herald reporter Jeffrey Gaunt suggests such a pitch is worthy of a used car salesman.

But as Gaunt so persuasively wrote about the Carpentersville School District 300 referendum in January 2006:

“It’s a little like tacking 10 years onto a five-year prison sentence. You’re already in prison, the argument goes, so what’s a few more years.”

In Grafton Township’s case, it's tacking on 20 years.

For argument's sake, let's say the impact on Grafton Township tax bills is too small to worry about.

Is anything else wrong with the town hall picture?

I can think of two things.

The first concerns the democratic process.

Township government is supposed to be, but is less and less, the government of the people.

I can remember when uppity township electors wrote in $1 for each line item in the Nunda Township Road Commissioner's budget. I think the commissioner was Leroy Geske. That was around 1970.

Residents of a private subdivision road wanted township taxpayers to improve it, but the township road commissioner, citing state law, refused.

Retaliation didn't deprive him of his salary because it's in the Town Fund.

That was the same year that Algonquin Township Assessor Forrest Hare's supporters added $500 in legal fees to sue the McHenry County Supervisor of Assessments Willard Hogge for having equalized Algonquin Township's property values higher than they should have been.

The township attorney frittered away the money telling the township board, which did not want the suit to go forward, why it couldn't be done.

The Illinois General Assembly, always being responsive to township officials, plugged that hole.

It prohibited electors from voting on budgets.

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The other articles in this series are can be found here:

The Skunk, the Meerkats and the Elephant - Part 1

The Skunk, the Meerkats and the Elephant – Part 3

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Why Townships Don't Just Reduce the Amount They Tax?

After the Grafton Township meeting (if you have never been to one, take a look--lots of pictures, plus an explanation of what happened), Township Assessor Bill Ottley came over and asked why I cared about the proposed Town Hall.

After all, I don't live in Grafton Township. (We live right on the Algonquin-Grafton Township line. Appropriately, it is called “Meridian Street.”)

He told me the township board did not need a referendum to borrow the month.

Frankly, that would not surprise me.

My Algonquin Township added onto its Route 14 building without referendum approval.

Somehow I missed that in all the state representative business of the time.

I told Ottley that non-referendum borrowing to buy Lakewood's golf course (Red Tail) had cost me $500 a year for the better part of the 1990's and that's why I was such a strong supporter of the Tax Cap and holding referendums when local governments borrow large sums of money.

He explained to me that the cost would amount to about $7 a year per household.

I was willing to grant him whatever figure he came up with.

He is a finance guy, after all.

He said it wouldn't raise taxes.

There I interjected that, while financing a new township building and garage might not raise tax bills from where they are not, if the new building were not constructed, township taxes could be reduced by $7 (or whatever the figure is) a year.

That's when I got the answer to the question in this article's headline.

Ottley told me if the township ever asked for less than it was getting, it could never get it back.

I pointed out that it could, if a referendum could be passed.

He suggested that—passage of a township tax hike referendum—was unlikely to occur.

He is probably correct.

Much of the opposition to the $3.5 million (plus over $1.5 million in interest) Grafton Township office complex and garage is based on opposition to township government's very existence.

Few would argue with a straight face that township supervisors should be paid what they earn.

I was reminded to write this story by Brian Slupski's Northwest Herald story on the failure of the Dorr Township electors to approve the purchase of land for a new town hall at its annual town meeting.

Here's a clue that fits into Ottley's revelation:

“(Dorr Township) had set aside about $2 million for the project in the township fund and about $750,000 in the highway district’s road fund.”

That brought about an

“Ah ha!”

moment.

I don't know the size of the Woodstock-based township's town fund, but, if someone looked, he or she might conclude that a $2 million surplus is hard to justify.

But just as with Grafton Township, if Dorr Township asked for less money than the maximum it is allowed to collect under the Tax Cap law, it would then end up with a lower base for the next year's request.

That would result in less money every year thereafter.

Downsizing government is pretty much against all the laws of political nature, of course.

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Grafton Township Assessor Bill Ottley is seen addressing the April 14, 2009, Annual Town Meeting. The Town Meeting photo shows the current township trustees voting to continue with the new town hall building project.

Posted first on McHenry County Blog.

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