43 Comments - Back to Work - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:01 am: *added to the “to do” list of changes needed in Illinois. Haha…after fair tax, property tax reform, De-gerrymandering, etc etc etc. - Fighter of Foo - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:03 am: School district consolidation first please. The old paradigm of one school taking on a district that is in deficit is gone. Time for change. - Thomas Paine - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:10 am: I think the smarter approach is to apply mitigation to the entire region if any county in the region is seeing an R-naught above 1. That would go for Cook County as well: if Chicago goes above 1, mitigation should apply to the Cook suburbs and visa versa. The piecemeal approach the governor is taking is too ineffective, creating confusion, and ultimately undermines his credibility and compliance. Let’s be honest: lack of enforcement is the biggest problem, followed by that post Rich wrote back on July 28th saying it was time for Pritzker to stop making excuses about contact tracing. Here we are at the end of August, with still no credible contact tracing program in Illinois. Massive failure. - Ok - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:11 am: They really should have thought of this when they did Aurora in the first place. And, really, do you want to ignite the racial flame of county realignment? - notsosure - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:13 am: Counties, school districts, you name it. We’ve got a lot of goofy local government borders in our state. - Rich Miller - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:14 am: ===ignite the racial flame of county realignment=== Take a breath. - TheInvisibleMan - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:18 am: Is it really an issue though? For those who understand what is happening, they are already taking the appropriate precautions and behavioral changes, no matter what county they live in. If they are just looking to skip over to another county to find a loopohole - well those are the exact people at the root of the problem in the first place. Not the location of county lines. - JSI - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:19 am: County remap is definitely in order: 5 Counties under 5,000 Population 15 Counties under 10,000 Population 45 Counties under 20,000 Population 54 Counties under 30,000 Population 72 Counties under 50,000 Population - Donnie Elgin - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:21 am: “I think the smarter approach is to apply mitigation to the entire region if any county in the region is seeing an R-naught above 1″ Yeah, let the lowest common denominator impact a huge region. Kane county is a great example - Elgin/Aurora teo towns that have huge positivity rates relative to the rest of the county. Countywide mitigation is bad enough - region-wide is even worse. - Bruce( no not him) - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:23 am: But, isn’t the whole regional/county thing because of the whining that was done about statewide shutdown? it is actually impossible to make everyone happy. - Cheryl44 - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:26 am: You know what would have been great? Experience fighting a global pandemic at the local level that was less than 100 years old. Only we don’t have that. - school board member - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:31 am: The entire state was covered by counties and townships then the cities incorporated and grew. Now we need to go back and fix the counties and township? We could consolidate the counties and township into the cities and grow the cities out to completely cover the state and be right back where we started. - Pundent - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:32 am: This was always the problem with mitigating on a city, county, or even state level. People can simply hopscotch to the areas where mitigation is lax or non-existent. We’ve seen that with border states. Our current testing process continues to lag and the delays make it ineffective. Until we get to daily at home testing or a vaccine we’ll continue to have hot spots pop up. And at some point they will become so prevalent that mitigation will have no meaning or effect. - bogey golfer - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:37 am: @ OK, at one time Aurora was entirely in Kane County, and Joliet will entirely in Will County. Both have annexed to the point their boundries now cross into adjoining counties. You implying taxing bodies cannot annex into another county, township, etc.? You are - Amalia - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:40 am: yes, too many counties and townships. Illinois, the home of more elected jurisdictions than any place in the world. there’s a better way to spend money, less administration leads to more service or lower taxes. reorganize. - DuPage Guy - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:40 am: Having worked for a suburban County, the form of government is both useful and woefully archaic. There’s a saying that if Abaraham Lincoln appeared in America today, the only government he would recognize is a County. Some things, like Health Department, Court, Police, Clerk/Recorder/Elections do good work. Some things don’t make any sense. Why is the top prosecutor an elected position? Why is the Circuit Clerk? The Coroner, who gets badges, carries a gun, and is the only person legally able to arrest the elected top cop, the Sheriff? Along with that, get rid of suburban townships. Ifa township is 75% incorporated, what does it really do? Health and Senior Services? All provided by the County. Do we really need another road jurisdiction after the State, County, and Municipality? The only thing worthwhile is the Assessor, and they just report back to the County Assessor anyway. However, I will say in rural parts of the State they do serve a purpose. To the point of the article: these Counties have always been strange to do top down regulations in. Sure, northern will is suburban with Joliet, but south its all cornfields. Same with Kane to the West, McHenry to the North, and Kendall to the Southwest. And Aurora is a headache for any election as they have the four Counties and their own election commission. - Dance Band on the Titanic - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:43 am: More than half the counties in Illinois have less residents than my particular suburb. My suburb is not even one of the five largest in my particular county. - muon - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:44 am: It’s easy to understand why one would use counties instead of municipalities, since municipalities change and counties don’t. Municipalities can grow through annexation and can ignore county lines which has resulted in the problem described in the post. Though some states restrict cross-county annexation it doesn’t seem likely here, and without that restriction rearranging county lines would not be a lasting fix. Another political unit that most people know is their school district, and those boundaries can’t change as readily as municipalities. One mechanism that might make more sense than county lines in Chicagoland is to use the school districts as collected in the Regional Offices of Education for the collars and the Intermediate Service Centers in Cook. School based boundaries would be particularly useful when COVID protocols need to vary by region and a county line splits a school district. - Anon E Moose - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:48 am: “we really need a county remap in this state.” YES. 102 counties is too many. - Ok - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:51 am: Clearly, the founders of Aurora could have predicted their future massive success. Destined to have extensive collections of name tags and hairnets. Party on. - iggy - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:54 am: 25 mega counties, lets Go. - Thomas Paine - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:56 am: @Donnie Elgin - One man’s “lowest common denominator” is another man’s “canary in a coal mine.” I am so old, I remember when Illinois Republicans told us we didn’t need to take precautions in Downstate because this was a Chicago problem. Which is about the same age when Florida Republicans said they didn’t need to take precautions because this was an Illinois problem. COVID is everywhere, we should stop pretending otherwise. - OneMan - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:56 am: DuPage Guy, the Aurora election commission was voted out of existence. To a degree, it made elections easier since it was just the commission and DuPage who had to deal with elections vs 4 counties. Also for what it is worth in terms of consolidation in the border area of the 4 counties in Aurora, three of them are in the same school district (308, it includes a small part of Kane County) and geographically is a huge district (it has kids with Joliet mailing addresses in it). - Mr. Morris - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 10:11 am: As someone from outside of the suburbs, I can say the County is not only more efficient but better positioned for new projects. It would be better especially for areas outside of Chicagoland to restrict cross-county annexation and prohibit counties from going across county-lines. Honestly, the best fix would be to consolidate all government to the county level as they have in many parts of the UK, its efficient. - Old Illini - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 10:17 am: I really like the county remap concept. The Aurora example, for example. Or Cook — why should (part of) Elgin and the NW suburbs be in Cook County? - Just Me 2 - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 10:22 am: The reason municipalities exist in multiple counties is because Mayors do not care about urban planning. The Mayors making these development deals do not care about the impact a development has on schools, fire districts, or county government operations. - illinifan - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 10:33 am: So much to reform: number of taxing entities, school districts, townships, counties, tax structure, gerrymandering etc. and so many forces fighting each change each step of the way. Almost feel like it may be easier to just “blow” up the state and just rebuild it completely to get the efficiency and cost savings we need. I know it won’t happen, so small steps. - Anyone Remember - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 10:35 am: “… 25 mega counties, lets Go.” And simultaneously adopt the Nevada / Florida model of 1 school district per county (same boundaries, different unit of government). 954 units of government become 50. A step in the right direction. - Unionman - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 10:37 am: I disagreed with most things Rauner. But Rauner was right that we needed to figure out a way to remove excess governmental bodies. Counties, townships, municipalities, park districts, road districts, school districts. Townships should be removed in their entirety. School and park districts should be consolidated into their respective municipalities. Then the municipalities should contract with each other for schooling if they cannot afford or have sufficient students to have their own middle or high school. Counties: Any city which is in multiple counties should be required to be set in one county. So Aurora residents should decide which county they are in and then the city borders will be the county borders in those areas. There are two many counties. However, deciding counties by population does not work. If you are deciding a county by population, then you may end up with a county which is too large to service and govern from an area perspective. I think that we should give counties the opportunity to merge if they would like. - SIUEalum - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 10:56 am: Counties definitely need reformed (Aurora is a perfect example, maybe a Broomfield Colorado solution) but township governments need to be seriously reformed. Some of the corruption that happens in townships smaller than 1K would make Blago blush. - Last Bull Moose - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 10:58 am: Dick Lugar rode the consolidation of city and county government in Indianapolis to a long and distinguished career in the Senate. Would be nice if we had someone with comparable skills and drive. Combining city and county governments where feasible would permit cutting costs without cutting services. - revvedup - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 11:01 am: The number of counties is not the issue, and will not solve ANY of the State’s problems. These problems were caused by generations of politicians kicking cans down the road. Well, the road finally reached a dead end. Consolidation does not always save money, and sometimes wrecks quality of services. County remapping is another boondoggle waiting to be fostered on taxpayers which will achieve nothing. You really want our politicians involved in a county remap when they can’t even do fair maps for elections? - Candy Dogood - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 11:09 am: I agree with Rich that remapping the counties might be in order — though there are some definite challenges to doing that — I’m also not sure this would turn into as much of a racial thing as people think it would, it’s going to be a greater issue for rural counties. ===5 Counties under 5,000 Population=== ===15 Counties under 10,000 Population=== For these smaller counties combining them into a larger county would be stripping them of not only some aspect of identity that’s been around for quite some time, but also stripping them of both autonomy and local government jobs in the area. Every single county elected official in a smaller county would fight this tooth and nail. Unfortunately for them, a lot of those counties are also served by state representatives that don’t really seem to possess a lot of the political skill required to prevent their counties from being remapped. Just politically speaking if this is something that is to be done, the lame duck Veto session is the best time to do it — or sometime in January or February, pandemic permitting. Though if I had to pick, I’d place eliminating township governments ahead of consolidating county governments, and the anthropological impact of eliminating a township won’t be as much of a factor as eliminating a county. - SAP - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 11:21 am: California, a state with almost 40 Million inhabitants has 58 counties. Just sayin’. - Liandro - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 11:27 am: “We have far too many counties here. And their boundaries, particularly in the suburbs, are just too confusing.” …in which I wholeheartedly agree with Rich. (I may have been reading Winnie-the-Pooh to my kids recently.) - Banish Misfortune - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 11:37 am: To some extent geographical proximity is so 2019. Working from home has taught us that function is what matters, not whether the library is close to the police station. For example libraries work with other libraries across county lines to consolidate functions all to the better of patrons. The same should be true for police and education, parks. Even roads and roadworks should be consolidated. But putting under a larger municipality would be a step back. Consolidate around expertise, not geography. Even though its okay to keep your cute little city hall. - Scott Summers - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 11:45 am: There are other approaches to slimming down and streamlining our plethora of governments. 1. Consolidated cities and counties, e.g., Unigov in Indianapolis. For more, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_city-county 2. Mergers. One would think that “conjoined communities” (my term) would be ripe for it. But it’s difficult to pull off: Urbana and Champaign have voted it down twice. It has happened, though. Colona and Green Rock (Henry County) merged in 1997. Evanston Township (coterminous with the city) was dissolved in 2014. 3. Intergovernmental cooperation. Article VII, Section 10 of the Illinois Constitution is very lightly used. It deserves far more attention and exercise. Specifically, subsection (c) provides: “The State shall encourage intergovernmental cooperation and use its technical and financial resources to assist intergovernmental activities.” Given the enormous political inertia associated with modifying or changing any aspect of Illinois governance, I believe that more intergovernmental cooperation is (at least for now) the best play. - DuPage Guy - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 11:50 am: =- OneMan - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 9:56 am: DuPage Guy, the Aurora election commission was voted out of existence. To a degree, it made elections easier since it was just the commission and DuPage who had to deal with elections vs 4 counties.= Thank you for letting me know. It’s not whether it was good or bad, it was just having to know who went where that was confusing for some people and those who had to direct them there. - Huh? - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 12:05 pm: All this talk about consolidation of school districts, counties, cities, and townships is just blather. Do you really think that this will happen? Consolidation of governments is anathema to elected officials. Who is going to give up their power? If anyone wants an example of consolidation of governments, look to what Louisville and Jefferson County did in Kentucky. The point of this post is the confusion that is created by municipalities that exist in more than 1 county. Do the orders for part of the town apply to another part of the town? If the municipal elected officials had any sense, they would apply the more stringent measures to the entire town. But they won’t because they are political creatures who waver and wobble to the whims of the business owners and their political group think. - Candy Dogood - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 3:49 pm: ===Who is going to give up their power? === States are the ultimate authorities for governments within their borders. If Illinois says “there shall be no townships” no townships shall there be. If Illinois says “All one county!” all one county there shall be. Illinois could say “Alright, here’s 78 newly proposed counties and if live in a county named after someone that owned slaves, your county automatically got consolidated and we’ve picked out some new names — the state districts known as the Eastern Bloc shall now be consolidated into Madigan County” and it would be so. - MyTwoCents - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 5:21 pm: SAP, and the bastion of conservative government, Texas has 254 counties with a population of 29 million. Of those counties, the smallest has a population of less 200 and 86 have a population less than 10,000. In fact, only a quarter of the counties have a population greater than 50,000. The point is while we could have the discussion of whether counties should be consolidated in Illinois, mentioning other states doesn’t add much because there’s always another example for the other argument. As to the post, I think it’s a discussion worth having, particularly with the smaller counties, both size wise and population wise. But as for the specific example above, the better solution would have been to not allow municipal annexation into other counties. DuPage, Kane, Will, etc. are already some of the larger counties in the state. - RDB - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 7:07 pm: Perhaps make the mitigation order cover a region plus all parts of cities that are part of the county. So in the example, have all of Aurora apply to the order. - Huh? - Tuesday, Aug 25, 20 @ 8:00 pm: “States are the ultimate authorities for governments within their borders.” Lawsuits in 3 … 2 … 1 … You need to read the Illinois Constitution to learn how consolidation of local governments is allowed. Pay attention to Article VII. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.