Education and abused children may be “community priorities,” as Gov. Jim Edgar said Wednesday, but so are police protection, garbage pickup and political loyalty.
That’s what frustrated Chicago-area municipal leaders had to say about Edgar’s plan to redirect their $211 million share of the state income tax surcharge to state programs designed to help children.
Well-to-do towns, who have used their share of the surcharge for projects like new fire stations and sidewalks, saw it as a stab in the back by a Republican governor they helped elect.
“Edgar’s not just declaring war on Mayor Daley but also on the suburban communities that supported his election. I didn’t know he could be that cavalier,” warned Al Larson, the mayor of Schaumburg.
Daley, who on Monday met in Evergreen Park with suburban mayors over coffee and doughnuts to protest the possible loss of surcharge money, reiterated Wednesday that his review showed Edgar doesn’t need the surcharge money at all. Loss of the surcharge would leave a $35 million hole in the city budget.
Daley said Edgar would receive $414 million in additional revenues next year and spend an additional $328 million on the proposed programs. This would leave $86 million left over, Daley said, even before the state would move to appropriate more than $200 million in surcharge revenues to cities.
“He doesn’t need our money, but he wants it,” Daley said.
Many suburban officials, however, saw Edgar’s move coming and didn’t include surcharge income in next year’s budgets.
But poorer towns warned that the surcharge loss could mean everything from layoffs of police officers to abandoning recycling programs. And they suggested that Edgar find more cuts in his own budget before asking them to give up more.
“Rather than cutting his budget, like we’ve done to the bone, he’s taking our money. And he’s telling us we’re not doing a good job,” charged Mayor Dwight Welch, whose town of Country Club Hills stands to lose $310,000, or about 5 percent of its already tight $6 million budget.
Since the surcharge was created in 1989, at least 20 percent of Illinois municipalities, including Country Club Hills, have turned to the funds to prop up budgets devastated by tax caps, the recent recession and the growing burden of state and federal mandates.
They were warned not to do it, that the temporary money-$28 per resident-was to be used only for one-time capital improvements like new firehouses and not for salaries.
But “we haven’t had the luxury of doing that,” said Harvey Mayor David Johnson.
Since 1985, he said, his south suburban community has lost $750,000 in federal revenue sharing and more than $600,000 in taxes as companies left town.
If Edgar’s budget passes, Harvey will lose another $528,000 of its $4 million budget and be forced to lay off 15 of its 40 police officers. It also will be forced to slow demolition of abandoned homes in town, the mayor said.
“It’s devastating,” Johnson said. “I’m sure there are municipalities that can afford to lose it. We can’t.”
North Chicago officials also have incorporated their $850,000 a year share of the surcharge into the general budget, where it has gone, in part, to union pay raises.
“They don’t care where the money came from or that it might go away,” said city spokesman Oliver Washington, of the union leaders. “You’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
In Rolling Meadows, Mayor Carl Couve warned that losing the surcharge, on top of a $1.4 million drop in sales tax revenue last year and a potential tax cap, “doesn’t leave us much direction except to start cutting services.”
And in Bolingbrook, the loss of $850,000 a year could mean the end of the village-run recycling program, which has proved a financial drag as markets for recyclable materials flag.
“You can only squeeze local governments so far,” said Mayor Roger Claar. “And if we have to cut back on services, we can’t cut back on snowplows.”
Municipal leaders promised Wednesday they would fight the governor’s plan. Bill Murphy, the mayor of Woodridge and first vice president of the Illinois Municipal League, said he and others would meet with top legislators Thursday in an effort to block the governor’s plan.
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“Belt-tightening in municipal government occurred a long time ago,” he said. “And in many places, it wasn’t even needed.”
Murphy, a personal friend of Edgar, said he and many other suburban mayors still support the Republican governor and back his efforts to balance Illinois’ budget.
But “on this matter, he and I are on a different page,” Murphy said. “We need to address both education and government needs, and not make it an either-or situation.”
About the hardest hit by the loss of the surcharge would be south suburban Ford Heights, the poorest suburb in the nation.
That community, where per capita income is less than $5,000 but tax rates are the highest in Cook County, receives $80,000 a year from the surcharge. That pays for several of its five police officers and keeps aged squad cars running.
If the money is cut, the police department, already staffed with only one officer on some shifts, would be devastated, said Sterling Frazier, village administrator.
“You’re putting people’s lives at risk,” Frazier said. “There’s no more money to be had. We have no place to go.”