* If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a million times. Illinois has far too many local governments. And it’s true that we do have more local governments than any other state. But how does Illinois compare with the rest of the country on a per capita basis? Stateline, the news service of the Pew Center on the States, took a look…

The US average is 3,451 people per local government. Illinois’ ratio is 1,835, or almost twice as many local government agencies per person as the rest of the country.

However, neighbors like Iowa (1,559), Missouri (1,609) and Wisconsin (1,823) have even fewer people per local government agencies as Illinois, making their per capita problem worse. Indiana, at 2,007, has just a bit more.

Then again, some of the other big states do much better than Illinois on a per capita basis. California has 8,576 people per local government, New York has 5,694, Texas has 5,201, Florida has 11,584, Michigan has 3,416, and Ohio has 3,116.

Illinois has a ton of local governments for a couple of reasons. First, it was a Jacksonian state back in the day. President Jackson advocated electing as many people as possible rather than appointing them. Also, Illinois’ old Constitution limited the amount of debt that individual local governments could accumulate, so the locals formed new governments to take on new debt.

Anyway, discuss.

       

45 Comments - QC - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:00 am: Senator Link’s bill should move forward in 2012. We’re not still back in the 1860s. - Downstate Commissioner - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:06 am: “so the locals formed new governments to take on new debt.” Didn’t go far enough and wasn’t completely accurate.-need to add “or to provide services not provided by other governments”. Street Light districts, drainage districts (which many times cross township and county lines), cemetery districts, are all examples of this. Almost all of them were created by local VOTER referendums to address a particular problem or issue, and to levy the taxes to pay for those services. Many of the “too many local governments klan” either don’t know this or ignore it. One other comment-most of them were formed before social security, OSHA, EPA,comptroller reports, Open Meetings Act, Freedom of Information, or other bureaucratic bookkeeping busy work mandates, which drive up costs. In other words, the expenses of many of these special districts were forced on them by outside interests, and have nothing to do with the original problem. - Downstate Commissioner - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:10 am: @ QC: actually, as far as financing local problems go, we still ARE back in the 1860s. Still have to raise property taxes by referendum to fix them… - wordslinger - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:14 am: –Illinois has a ton of local governments for a couple of reasons. First, it was a Jacksonian state back in the day. President Jackson advocated electing as many people as possible rather than appointing them. Also, Illinois’ old Constitution limited the amount of debt that individual local governments could accumulate, so the locals formed new governments to take on new debt. – Great historical perspective. Much obliged. That leads me to recommend “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848,” part of the Oxford History of the United States. Comprehensive, accessible and absolutely riveting. - Shore - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:15 am: maryland and virginia have been I think 2 of the best governed states over the past decade with a few exceptions. It’s something worth considering. - Tommydanger - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:17 am: Way too much duplication of buildings, personnel and equipment among our units of governments. Why do we need a township road commissioner/township road and bridge fund levy? The road is either within an incorporated municipality or not. So either the City should be responsible for plowing/maintaining the road or the County should,unless its a State route of course. Consolidating road operations would ultimately lead to fewer pieces of equipment, personnel and buildings. Some municipalities have separate library, parks and sanitary district taxing bodies. Why can’t all those functions fall within the authority and control of the host municipality? Its nice to have independent stand alone taxing bodies to advocate for parks, libraries and the orderly extension of sanitary sewer services, but at what cost in the duplication of equipment, facilities, and personnel? - Ahoy - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:19 am: I actually wonder what happens when you take out Cook County or just did an anylsis of “downstate.” I think the larger counties drive this figure higher. - Been There - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:21 am: I don’t think we should be comparing small population states to larger ones. There could be just four or five counties in North Dakota and they probably would still have more counties per person than Illinois. Land mass also has to come into the equation. Actually what ticks me off more than any of this is when you look at all those small population states on top and they each get two US Senators. Talk about proportions that are out of whack. That one just boggles my mind. - Rich Miller - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:29 am: ===I think the larger counties drive this figure higher. === Most likely the opposite. - The name's Clay. Henry Clay - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:34 am: Yet another reason why Andrew Jackson was history’s greatest monster. - Anonymour - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:40 am: Third, the same reason that motivated much of Jackson’s approach: increased opportunities for patronage. - amalia - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 10:57 am: county by county, deal with the number of elected officials. Cook County has too many. Comm. Fritchey is right on target. with technology, why do we need so many people keeping track of records? clerk of the courts, clerk of the county, recorder of deeds, it’s madness. - Bill White - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:01 am: How does appointing someone to run the Recorder of Deeds office (for example) reduce patronage opportunities? It seems to me that if the County Board (or Springfield) appoints such officials, patronage opportunities will be expanded. - Slick Willy - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:04 am: ===Actually what ticks me off more than any of this is when you look at all those small population states on top and they each get two US Senators. Talk about proportions that are out of whack. That one just boggles my mind.=== Why? Two senators per state helps to ensure the rights of small states. Each states’s membership to the house is determined by population. Checks and balances my friend. - 47th Ward - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:09 am: For the Cook County Recorder’s office, I think we should just turn it over to the title companies while retaining ownership of the records and keep the laws governing their use. Right now, the Recorder is essentially duplicative, and the current employees make the system less, not more, efficient. The middle man in this example is the government and we need to get it out of the way. Has anyone here done a title search in Cook County? Ever been to the basement of the County Building? The title companies might as well take over, and as long as they maintain the records in a comprehensive and accessible way, they’ll do a much better job at a fraction of the cost. It doesn’t work for all local offices, but in this instance, the private sector can (and does) a much better job. - 47th Ward - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:10 am: I meant to add, eliminating the Recorder’s office does not eliminate a local unit of government. I think we still have Tuberculosis Sanitarium districts in Cook County. Get rid of those and you’re eliminating units of local government. - wordslinger - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:14 am: –Has anyone here done a title search in Cook County? Ever been to the basement of the County Building? Stalinesque. It’s like waiting in line for hours in the old Soviet Union for black bread, Ivan the Terrible Vodka and Old Redwood Bark tp. Couldn’t agree more. There’s nothing about efficiency or service in those offices. We all work on computers in the 21st Century, folks. - Been There - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:16 am: ===Checks and balances my friend.=== The key word there is balances. In keeping with the spirit of this thread, I think we should combine North & South Dakota, Montana & Idaho. And merge Wyoming with Colorado and Kansas with Nebraska. Then the new states can keep their two Senators. - wordslinger - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:22 am: –I think we still have Tuberculosis Sanitarium districts in Cook County.– There are at least four Mosquito Abatement Districts in Cook. - Capital View - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:23 am: you don’t go far enough, Been There. I remember a map of about 12 years ago of the US with only 31 states. One stretched from Milwaukee through Chicago metro to northern Indiana, and another was Iowa, balance of Illinois, and balance of Indians. Internally, do we need downstate counties smaller than the current Senate districts? And don’t get me started on townships… - MCgone - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:23 am: There was a monolithic, efficient source for all forms of title insurance and info in the 60s; it was Chicago Title and Trust Co. You also paid what they said or didn’t get a guaranteed title to your home. 48 of 50 states were covered. - amalia - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:30 am: even if the RODeeds were not done via private service….would have to give that long scrutiny…..the problem with an elected at the helm is yet another layer of people employed who are part of that elected’s army. do nothings, or worse yet, people who block getting things done, foster an atmosphere of give me this and I’ll get that done for you. people who will not change because they protect jobs. wishing a long look could be taken at the assessor’s office. spend time actually looking at properties and see if the description of the property matches what you see near your house. some discrepancies are perhaps criminal. you see something rehabbed and the description is something very old. - Carl Nyberg - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:34 am: Illinois has too much stuff on the ballot. It’s not reasonable to expect citizens to cast informed votes on 50+ contests. Wisconsin may have many units of government, but have you seen a Wisconsin ballot? In general elections it’s a very clean ballot. POTUS, U.S. Senate, Congress, Governor, state legislator and that’s about it. - Irish - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:43 am: There is more to this than just the number of people served vs number of local governments. For example in my area the townships are very important to the rural farm families in road maintenance, snow plowing, posting and monitoring weight limits on roads to protect them, etc. Many of these roads have bridges that go over the many drainages that flow through the farmland. Those bridges need to be monitored and repaired. No way the County could keep up with all of that and still maintain the County roads and bridges. Our area has a road every mile as a standard and most of those are township roads very important to the farmers for accessing their fields. In town the townsip offices are a primary source of assistance to those who cannot afford rent, utilities, etc. Some townships require those receiving assistance to perform community or township service for their money, others do not. The county also does not provide those services. These services are full time jobs. If the county were to take over providing these services you would just be moving the headcount from the township to the county and the county would have to raise taxes to cover those costs. Where is the savings? One of the things that I have seen increase the number of local governmental bodies that aren’t needed is the formation of park districts or port districts in areas where large power generating stations are located. Near one of those nuclear stations in our area the local farmers rformed a port district just to take advantage of the tax they could impose on the generating station. They use this money to fund bus trips to sporting events in Chicago and other trips. I think the rules for this type of thing need to be tightened up a bit as the generating company is passing these costs on to all of us. - lincoln's beard - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:53 am: This statistic is interesting, but it could be a bit misleading. I’d be more interested in knowing in how many overlapping local government jurisdictions the average citizen resides. - dupage dan - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:58 am: There is no standing process whereby units of gov’t/laws/programs are peridically reviewed for relevance (eg: Tuberculosis Sanitariums Districts). We all know that it is far easier to start a gov’t program than it is to end it, no matter how irrelevant or wasteful. However, that doesn’t stop some from trumpeting more gov’t programs. Sigh. - 47th Ward - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 12:08 pm: The TB districts were created to issue bonds to build the TB hospitals. I have to believe the bonds have now finally been repaid, but if not, you can’t really eliminate the levy until the bonds are retired. That’s one reason these are so hard to get rid of. - hisgirlfriday - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 12:34 pm: 47th ward and wordslinger, usually I am on the same page as you folks when it comes to things on this blog but I couldn’t disagree more with the idea of turning over the deed recording process over to the title companies. After all the crazy mortgage fraud and robosigning of foreclosure documents by the banksters, I just don’t trust the financial/real estate sectors to not abuse the public trust in any way possible to make a profit and I see no reason to think the deeds recording process would be any different. At least in the case of an elected recorder of deeds you can vote the person out (theoretically). Plus, I find it hard to believe it would be any cheaper to pay a private company to do this stuff. I mean you know a contract by the county to run the title service would just be more tax money for the Combine coffers. Now I’m not against reforming the office of recorder of deeds and if you, 47th ward, want to run for recorder of deeds and reform that dept. let me know where to send a campaign check. - Judgment Day - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 12:35 pm: Originally posted by TommyDanger: “Why do we need a township road commissioner/township road and bridge fund levy? The road is either within an incorporated municipality or not. So either the City should be responsible for plowing/maintaining the road or the County should,unless its a State route of course” Little more information…. Municipalities are responsible for municipality streets (except for Federal/State highways, unless municipality has reached agreement to take over those responsibilities). Counties have responsibility for County highways and roads, except for what is known in some quarters as “secondary roads”, which are the responsibilities of the Township Road districts. It’s all very confusing, but it really does work out pretty well in practice. Most of the time, the County Highway department and the Township Road Commissioners get along just fine - it’s more about each department’s working relationship with (a) their respective township board, or (b) their County Board. As far as duplication of equipment - well, in practice, that actually works out pretty well. There’s a substantial amount of ongoing communication that occurs between the different highway folks in most (non Cook) Counties here in IL - so if something breaks, or something needs to be borrowed, well, arrangements get made. Really does work out nicely. Having some level of redundancy in equipment and facilities isn’t necessarily a bad thing when the unexpected happens (like the blizzard last winter; or a tornado, or a flood). - titan - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 12:37 pm: It isn’t so much the number of people per unit that is significant, it is the overlap of units. A small population state is often full of a lot of small cities/villages. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it isn’t really problematic. Illinois gets problematic where there is many layers of government over the same people - city/village & township/road district & school district & park district & library district & mosquito abatement district & lighting district & drainage district … It is the overlapping that generates inefficencies, not the number of people per unit. - hisgirlfriday - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 12:40 pm: “Wisconsin may have many units of government, but have you seen a Wisconsin ballot? In general elections it’s a very clean ballot. POTUS, U.S. Senate, Congress, Governor, state legislator and that’s about it.” Yeah, and since the 2010 general election they’ve had a state Supreme Court race (why couldn’t that happen during a general election?) and like a dozen recall elections. Do we really want to emulate that? - Judgment Day - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 12:54 pm: Ok, County Recorder’s offices…. Now there’s an area that is a prime candidate for reorganization and/or elimination (second only to Regional Supt. of Schools). First off, most of the Recorder’s offices are little fiefdoms - and not overly efficient to boot. The entire process needs to be reorganized as follows: I. Land Records division: A. Chief County Assessment Official (appointed position as department/division head; has to be State certified and a professional). A.1 Assessment division. Chief Deputy assessment official functions as COO (Chief Operating Officer). A.2 Planning and Zoning (if exists) A.3 GIS (Geographic Information System; legal description based mapping) A.4 Recorded Documents. Tie all recorded documents back to their physical location on the ground through the GIS System. As part of the requirement, make it MANDATORY that any County adopting the above reorganization provisions would have to implement a web browser based document tracking system available for access (no cost) to the general public over the internet. I’m not saying get copies of recorded documents for free over the internet (a really, really bad idea - unless you are into committing real estate fraud!!), but some type of easily usable FREE (and user friendly, not user hostile!) tract indexing/searching system would be required. Oh, I can dream…. Btw, let’s say that in January/February 2012, the USPS gets drastically cuts back on service, or even shuts down (unlikely, but one never knows these days). What are most local governments going to do, because they are extraordinary dependent upon the postal service. - Shemp - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 12:56 pm: As noted by others, it’s not simply the quantity, it’s the layers. Some governments have outlived their useful lives in modern times, ie townships. Township functions should be delegated to the counties. The waste at the township level is astounding. Who is paying attention to the more than 1400 townships in Illinois? No one. - Just Me - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 1:07 pm: Rich, you’re close but not exact why Illinois has so many units of local government. After the Civil War the northern part of the state still didn’t get along very well with the southern part of the state, so to help difuse problems before they began State officials encouraged local governmental units because people could trust the local “bubba” to do things right. - 47th Ward - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 1:17 pm: ===I find it hard to believe it would be any cheaper to pay a private company to do this stuff.=== They’re doing it now hisgirlfriday, and it doesn’t cost taxpayers anything. As someone else noted, Chicago Title is the dominant player, and their records are better managed than the Recorder’s, more comprehensive and up-to-date. All we’d lose is the government employees that are currently slowing the system down by failing to keep records current and accessible. Buyers and sellers will always utilize title companies and title insurance is a huge industry, all handled by the private sector. Buyers purchase insurance mostly in the event that a Recorder failed to include a lien on a property. Chicago Title became the dominant player because the Recorder’s system (Torrens) was (and is) not reliable. Your concerns about shady foreclosure and lending practices are spot-on, but that was all done within the existing structure and I don’t recall any elected Recorder sounding the alarm bells. The title companies are third parties between the buyers and sellers and their respective lenders, ensuring that a seller is the true owner and that no other party has a claim against the title. The Recorder’s office is simply the repository of records, which should remain the property of the public, with licenses granted to certified title companies to access and manage. The taxpayers would save money by not having government employees get in the way of this. We know it works in practice, we just need to eliminate the office in Cook County to prove it works in theory too. But then, all those 27th Ward (and the 42nd Ward holdovers) would have to find other do-nothing jobs. - aaron singer - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 1:38 pm: Lookin at my local area, Evanston, I see several layers of government that could be combined. There is a park district separate from the city’s park district, Ridgeville, which I see no reason to exist. The two school districts, 65 and 202, the former K-8 and the latter high school, could be combined. Looking over the border at Skokie, a town of 60,000 does not need half a dozen different school districts. Combine them into one or two school districts, and you’ll cut down on administrative costs. There is already some talk about getting rid of the Township, as it is co-terminus with the city. That would make some sense. I realize that each body of government needs to be looked at specifically and an umbrella solution does not exist. But surely there is a room there to operate a much more efficient government. - Slick Willy - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 1:48 pm: ===…I think we should combine North & South Dakota, Montana & Idaho. And merge Wyoming with Colorado and Kansas with Nebraska. Then the new states can keep their two Senators.=== When you get done with that one, see what you can do with the Israelis and the Palestinians too. - jerry 101 - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 2:49 pm: Downstate Commissioner - Very true, the debate should include a mention of the fact that all these special districts were voter approved. However, that doesn’t mean that they remain necessary a century after their creation. Rolling services up into fewer government bodies should (of course, the devil is always in the details) improve services and reduce costs. 47th Ward - regarding the title searches in Cook County - it takes money to move all those records to an electronic system. Cook County’s broke. Where’s the money going to come from? Modernizing government services is a great idea. Unfortunately, it is also expensive, and elected officials are pretty quick to quash any budget proposals to modernize such things. The Title companies are, also, title insurance companies. They aren’t title companies. As has been clearly shown throughout the mortgage meltdown mess, private companies cannot be relied upon to even bother with recording property transfers. A big (and yet to unfold scandal) is with the Title Insurance companies themselves, and the fact that they wrote policies that essentially make it impossible to sue the Title Insurance company (or to collect on your insurance) when you discover your property has a clouded title. I wouldn’t trust private companies with something as important as maintaining records as to who owns what piece of land. They can’t get their own part of the process right. The recorders didn’t sound the alarm bells because they were in the dark the whole time. Title recording requires voluntary compliance, and if the companies involved in changing the title are just setting up their own little outside system to do it outside of the recorder’s office system (lets call this MERS), and then skip actually reporting it to the recorder (perhaps out of a desire to avoid paying the fees to record the property), how is the Recorder to know? The Recorder doesn’t. But the Recorder is out a whole lotta money that may have been useful for updating their IT systems. And, what you end up with, is a lot of property with clouded title, and a Title Insurance industry that is writing policies that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. - East Sider - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 2:50 pm: If you want to start eliminating layers of government in Illinois, I would start with township government. Total waste of taxpayer money. - downstate commissoner - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 4:28 pm: East Sider and other anti townshipers, In our county, the Township Highway Commissioners routinely have their roads plowed before the County does, and the voting taxpayers know it. If the county were to take over the township roads, they would have to have a tax increase equivalent to the townships’ to maintain the roads (no savings there), and more employees, most of whom would be full-time UNION employees; most township employees, (and for that matter the commissioners themselves)are part time, working for a lot less money. Unfortunately, the result would be poorer service. Duplication of Equipment (which actually doesn’t occur0: there might be some small reductions, but most townships have about the same number of pieces of equipment per miles of road; while some equipment seems to duplicated, it probably actually isn’t: if it takes one dump truck to maintain 40 miles of road, it would take two trucks to maintain 80 miles of road: the same is true for other equipment. While some of the larger townships have more of the more specialized,equipment,they routinely help other townships (and there’s that equipment efficiency that the antis always talk about). Blanket solutions for a problem (if there is one) seldom solve everything. Getting rid of township government isn’t going to solve very many problems, but will actually cause more problems, and the solution will probably have poorer results. - Anonymous - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 5:03 pm: County school districts coterminous with county boundaries. Eliminate townships. Move township funding to counties or municipalities, except for township aid which should be eliminated because federal and state financial assistance already provides adequately for the needy. Eliminate tax caps for any taxing district absorbing another taxing district’s duties and funding. Institute state-wide periodic review of all taxing districts except county, municipal and parks, similar to the health care facilities board. - reformer - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 5:55 pm: Thirty states and 17 counties in the Land of Lincoln somehow get along without township government. In Cook County, twp hwy commissioners have as few as 5 miles of unincorporated roadway. It’s extremely inefficient to have a separate unit of government to maintain so few miles. - Been There - Tuesday, Oct 4, 11 @ 11:14 pm: ===When you get done with that one, see what you can do with the Israelis and the Palestinians too.=== Slick, thanks for the confidence you have in my abbilities. - Logic not emotion - Wednesday, Oct 5, 11 @ 10:04 am: “Actually what ticks me off more than any of this is when you look at all those small population states on top and they each get two US Senators. Talk about proportions that are out of whack. That one just boggles my mind.” “I remember a map of about 12 years ago of the US with only 31 states. One stretched from Milwaukee through Chicago metro to northern Indiana, and another was Iowa, balance of Illinois, and balance of Indians. Internally, do we need downstate counties smaller than the current Senate districts?” Well… I for one am glad that those small population states have the same number of Senators. Otherwise, the US Legislature would be as messed up as is the Illinois legislature. The Representatives represent the population. The Senators should represent the political subdivisions in some way. This helps ensure that one (or a few) population centers do not virtually control the entire process and that neither the legislative body nor its actions are representative of the entire political body geographically. Rather than revise the US Senate, I would support revising the Illinois one. The system in Illinois contributes to many in the state feeling totally disenfranchised from the entire process. - Logic not emotion - Wednesday, Oct 5, 11 @ 10:07 am: “similar to the health care facilities board” And we know how well that board works. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.