* The general conservative consensus on township government, from the Illinois Policy Institute…
Illinois has more units of local government than any other state and the second-highest property taxes in the nation. House Bill 1861 would have given Illinoisians the power to potentially reduce both at the ballot box.
Illinois is home to nearly nearly 6,000, layers of government, excluding school districts – over 1,000 more than Indiana, Kentucky and Iowa combined. The average Illinoisian lives under six layers of government, which are often duplicative and share overlapping duties.
Illinoisians find themselves paying those multiple layers of government for nearly identical services, leading to excessive property taxes.
Sponsored by state Rep. Jonathan Carroll, D-Northbrook, the aim of HB 1861 is to empower taxpayers to consolidate townships at the local level without relying on permission from Springfield. The bill failed to make it out of a House committee by the March 26 deadline, but it could return in the fall.
While Illinois has more than 1,400 townships, only McHenry County residents currently have the power to eliminate them. A county-specific bill was signed into law in 2019, giving McHenry County taxpayers the opportunity to eliminate any of the county’s townships by a referendum.
* From a Tribune editorial…
Ideally, Illinois would go on a Marie Kondo-style tidying frenzy and eliminate all government units that no longer “spark joy,”
* From Gov. Pritzker’s proposed budget…
Township Consolidation
Reducing Governmental Layers Illinois is known as the state with the highest number of local governments in the country.28 Counted among this total are Illinois’ 1,426 townships in 84 of Illinois’ 102 counties. These little-known units of local government are division of a county that may or may not overlap or be coterminous with city boundaries. Under Illinois law, townships have three primary functions: general assistance for low- income individuals and families, assessing the value of property in the township, and maintaining roads and bridges within the township. These are functions that could potentially be absorbed within an overlapping county or city government, reducing the need for this additional layer of government.
The Governor is proposing to empower Illinois taxpayers to reduce or eliminate duplicative taxing bodies, increasing the efficiency of service provision to local communities and saving taxpayer money by implementing legislation that enables community-led township consolidation, simplifies the process for communities to petition for a referendum to eliminate or consolidate their township government by lowering the petition threshold, allows county boards to initiate a referendum to eliminate township organization, permits communities to petition for a referendum to merge their township government with a neighboring township, and eliminates the office of township assessor in counties with populations under 5,000, transferring the office’s duties to the county.
* Some Republicans oppose the governor’s ideas, however. WAND TV…
Downstate Senate Republicans are concerned with Gov. JB Pritzker’s plan to consolidate townships in small communities.
The proposal could eliminate the office of township assessor in counties with less than 5,000 people. Pritzker administration officials explained the legislation would enable community-led township consolidation and allow county boards to create referendums on the countywide elimination of township organization.
Still, Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet) told reporters in Springfield Thursday that merging townships will lead to massive tax hikes.
“We will be raising people’s property taxes if Governor Pritzker’s idea were to become law because the county simply cannot perform the same services at the level the townships are doing it when you’ve got staff already on retainer,” Rose said.
And, as subscribers already know, the Democratic sponsor didn’t move the legislation forward by the committee deadline…
Senate Bill 2217 is currently assigned to the Senate Executive Committee. Although, the measure did not receive a hearing before the Senate committee deadline Thursday.
- JS Mill - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 8:50 am:
=merging townships will lead to massive tax hikes.=
Pick a lane Chapin, what is your idea for government consolidation? Although, in his defense, good ideas are not his strong suit.
- Sara Jones - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:04 am:
Chapin is completely wrong in this one. Townships already have a tax levy - thus property taxes would not change but the levy would shift from the township to the County, or the consolidated local government.
- redrepublican65 - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:15 am:
The real bill to watch on this is SB 2504. You keep on paying for the dissolved township in perpetuity, but the money goes to the County instead.
- Norseman - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:21 am:
The only thing massive I see is Rose’s hyperbole. Maybe he should learn from his party’s DOGE team and introduce a law getting rid of townships and eliminate the need for taxes. I know, DOGE doesn’t care about doing it legally.
- Candy Dogood - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:21 am:
===eliminate all government units that no longer “spark joy,”===
This might be the first time in years that a Tribune Editorial did something besides frustrate me.
===because the county simply cannot perform the same services at the level the townships are doing it===
This isn’t about policy for the GOP. There are plenty of counties that never or briefly had and eliminated their township governments that can serve as examples of counties doing all of the work that townships are doing else where.
The GOP opposition to this bill is simply because due to voting trends in recent years a majority of the township government spots are filled by Republican elected officials. If these townships go away they lose their down ticket races doing ‘free’ work that benefits up ticket races.
The GOP position in this is to protect the paychecks their friends and political allies are drawing at unnecessary, duplicative, and expensive levels of government.
Obviously they’re fine lying to do do it. If they’re not lying, I’d love to see the homework they’ve done where after eliminating the salaries for the elected officials and other township officials this winds up being more expensive for the voters.
Perhaps they’ve never looked at how much is going towards the salaries of township officials within their own districts or how many townships exist in some counties with relatively small populations.
- TheInvisibleMan - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:23 am:
“because the county simply cannot perform the same services at the level the townships are doing”
Well, to make it easier to manage we could always just partition out the impacted county into sections, say 7 miles by 7 miles, and then divide up county resources for each defined block based on the local requirements. It could even be fairly paid for by special assessments added on to individual tax bills based on the cost required in each segment…
Hey, wait a minute (banned punct)
Join me and Chapin next week where we’ll be talking about our plan to get rid of the wheel, and replace it with a far superior device - the wheel.
- Just Another Anon - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:26 am:
I’ve often remarked that the solution isn’t eliminating all townships (though some just make sense to consolidate), the solution is eliminating special districts and giving their duties to the Township, municipality, and/or County. There are a load of “paper” fire districts, mosquito abatement districts, cemetery maintenance districts, Library Districts, Soil and Water Conservatory Districts, Park Districts, and probably a few others I can’t think of off the top of my head. In the instance of paper fire districts, they exist to levy, pay their board members, and then pay a local municipality to provide the fire service. Cut out the steps and the bloat and just require fire services with a direct levy to the municipality on those properties served by the city. Literally nothing would change except (1) the name of the levy on the tax bill, (2) fewer paid elected officials, and (3) greater transparency to the taxpayer. It would also provide a more equitable assessment of the cost of the fire protection services. Mosquito abatement districts are similar. They almost all exist to (1) levy, and (2) enter into a contract with one of a few big providers (Clarke, etc) to do the actual spraying. Why not put those services into the County or Township to benefit from economies of scale?
I could go on, but the solution (generally speaking) is to eliminate special districts and provide those duties to the attendant counties, townships, and municipalities. Its not enough to just have fewer units, it needs to be fewer units doing more, more efficiently.
- Um, No - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:28 am:
=Although, in his defense, good ideas are not his strong suit.=
Although Chapin was out front WAY before any else on the Mahomes Aquifer Carbon issue. That his bill was pirated by the majority as often happens should not eclipse the reality that Chapin was on this early and was correct when nobody else was discussing it.
Likely his finest hour.
- Juice - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:34 am:
Just Another Anon, I’m not opposed to eliminating the special purpose districts.
But when you look at the data, that’s not where the money is at. And also, the two areas where we are significantly out of sync with most of the rest of the country is our number of school districts, and number of municipalities. But neither party seems particularly interested in pushing that rock up the hill.
- Downstate - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:38 am:
Great idea. Our local township government was faced with a limitation on board compensation as dictated by the state. Remuneration was capped to a per-meeting level. No problem. They simply started meeting twice as often.
- Quad Cities - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:45 am:
i went to state senator mike halpin’s town hall last week in east moline and in the midst of the trump crisis there were at least three questions asked about bills to eliminate townships .. you have to give the township lobbyists their due
- OneMan - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:55 am:
Keeping a unit of government will result in massive tax savings, which is not something I expected to hear from a Republican. Then again, I hear lots of things now from Republicans I never expected to hear Republicans.
- NIU Grad - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:56 am:
Township governments are also one of the few entities left where Republicans can get full-time elected positions in this state.
ILGOP hates everyone on a government job…except when its their own.
- Excitable Boy - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 9:58 am:
- Ideally, Illinois would go on a Marie Kondo-style tidying frenzy and eliminate all government units that no longer “spark joy,” -
Are their any adults at all over there?
- Don't Bloc Me In - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 10:02 am:
@Just Another Anon…by “Soil and Water Conservatory Districts” I assume you mean Soil and Water Conservation Districts. There is one in each county. They are not taxing districts, but received funds from the state.
- Gravitas - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 10:02 am:
I am in favor of eliminating townships that exist in areas that are already fully incorporated in municipalities. In Cook County, there are communities such as Cicero, Oak Park, River Forest where the municipalities and the townships completely overlap. A few years ago, Evanston somehow managed to eliminate its township government for the same reason.
Township governments are really meant to provide services in rural unincorporated areas.
- Aaron B - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 10:08 am:
I really don’t know how much savings eliminating smaller townships will even make but it would be worth looking at. I don’t see any conceivable way consolidation would cost more money though. Most likely it would be a net zero change at worst if it didn’t save money from less administration overhead. Maybe my tax bill is atypical but the township stuff is only like 0.5% of my bill so I’m not terribly worried about it. I would like to see more transparency in the world of townships though. I literally have no idea what they do other than tell me my $200k house should have the same assessment as the $275k house a few blocks away.
- Don't Bloc Me In - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 10:43 am:
Townships and their duties vary widely around the state. I cannot understand why they should exist at all in urban areas, where there is a duplication of services, and many other resources available. My expertise is with rural townships downstate. Some are as small as 18 sections, which is 18 square miles. There might be a small village within the township. However, that’s 18 sections of farmland and a few farmsteads to support the township’s work. Even a full township of 36 sections can have trouble keeping the roads in good repair. For the most part, these townships serve mainly as road districts. Each one must maintain a basic line of equipment. They can afford only used equipment, which sometimes requires more expensive repairs. This equipment spends more time in storage than being used. Getting a qualified person to serve as road commissioner can be a problem. It’s not a full-time job, but usually goes to someone with other full-time employment, or is retired. As for assistance to the needy, requests in my county are sent to the county for help. It’s my experience that my township is currently run as efficiently as possible, but the system itself is inefficient. I favor a model where the county takes care of all roads, with input and oversight from a board representing all townships. Full-time employees will make better use of equipment.
- Homebody - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 10:49 am:
Speaking only as a Chicago resident, from the perspective of aldermanic prerogative, Illinois has a culture of having way too many fiefdoms run by petty tyrants. It is arguably the biggest hurdle to any sort of meaningful reforms or progress on nearly every issue in the state. No matter what you want to accomplish, there are so many people with the ability to throw wrenches in things that it is no surprise that minor corruption is so rampant.
- TNR - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 10:55 am:
Senator Rose is continuing the Illinois GOP’s hypocritical tradition of calling for government consolidation for everyone but themselves. Government is bad…unless it’s a government prison, college, developmentally disabled center, or an obscure highway commission, in a Republican district.
And speaking of Chapin, I can’t believe I never made the connection between him and Matt Foley (Chris Farley’s motivational speaker character,) until recently watching an SNL 50th Anniversary highlight reel. It’s not just the physical appearance that’s striking, it’s the way they both bloviate.
- Jibba - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 10:55 am:
Eliminating township governments may not reduce taxes all that much, but that level of government seems to be more susceptible to the good old boys network more than larger units. The township supervisor always has his road rocked and oiled more frequently than anyone else.
- anon2 - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 11:10 am:
Republicans say they want government efficiency. In the Chicago area, there are township highway commissioners with fewer than ten miles of roads to maintain. Yet the GOP wants to preserve all 1,428 townships in IL.
- Flyin' Elvis'-Utah Chapter - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 11:18 am:
Republicans against fewer controlling government bodies.
Man, we really are across the Rubicon. Out is in, up is down, and Tuesdays come in twos instead of once a week.
- JS Mill - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 11:19 am:
=Join me and Chapin next week where we’ll be talking about our plan to get rid of the wheel, and replace it with a far superior device - the wheel.=
Spit. Take. Bravo.
=Likely his finest hour.=
His only hour.
He generally votes against anything related to conservation… until he is drinking the water that is.
- DownStateGrl - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 11:26 am:
The Governor proposal that would like result in property tax increases is HB3717. Local property tax funded universities in every community!
- I-55 Fanatic - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 11:27 am:
It’s so quaint how so many township governments have managed to cling on to existence during these past several decades of rural population decline. Give it one more generation and I’ll be shocked if township governments can scrounge up enough people to even constitute themselves. Soybean fields and empty barns can’t be elected to a Board of Trustees.
- ModerateGOP - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 11:28 am:
Township governments could cease to exist today and 99% of us would not even know they were gone. It is long past time to begin reducing the number of units of local government.
- halving_fun - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 11:41 am:
Kudos to the politicians that are trying to get this done
Not surprised Republicans are opposed. They also have a stranglehold on state jobs too
- Second Verse - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 11:56 am:
Some townships do little. Others are outstanding service providers for seniors, the poor, those in need of health care, and other citizens in need of a helping hand.
What is needed is a standardized list of services all townships will be responsible for providing. The township budget should clearly list what tax dollars are directed to each service.
For example, I know that Orland Township does an outstanding job providing services to needy residents who struggle to find help elsewhere. It is very clear where the resources go.
I have seen other townships that do little or nothing besides handing out patronage jobs. The legislature should create a list of services required to be provided by each township. Have failure to provide these stated services be a reason to abolish the township. Give supervisory power to a committee appointed to review performance.
Everyone is tired of townships who maintain 10 miles of rod and do little else. We can do better.
Last, be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water here. Clearly define the purpose of townships, and hole all townships accountable. Measure performance yearly and eliminate those who don’t make the cut.
- Lurker - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 12:34 pm:
I’d like to see it go even further and combine counties.
- Leatherneck - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 1:22 pm:
I just put together a map on Dave’s Redistricting App with a hypothetical City of Springfield after its consolidation with all but a small part of Capitol, Springfield, and most of Woodside townships. This would also swallow up the donut holes, Leland Grove, Jerome, and Southern View in one swoop as well.
- thechampaignlife - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 1:31 pm:
I think you could put a dent in the number of units of government simply by putting the question to the people. Every local non-county tax district should have a question on the ballot every ten years asking voters if it should continue to exist, be eliminated, be consolidated with the largest adjoining district, or be absorbed into the county government. It lets the voters decides, forces the question to be asked, and provides a good opportunity to use ranked choice voting.
- Aaron B - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 1:41 pm:
==I’d like to see it go even further and combine counties.==
Lets do some school district consolidation too. Just as an example, Kankakee/Bradley/Bourbonnais have 5 school districts for the contiguous tri-city area. Admittedly, school districts that cover larger geographical areas would be harder to combine due to how far kids would have to travel but there must be some savings to be had in some areas.
Since I’m mentioning Kankakee County, it appears that voters in St Anne IL in K3 County (pop. 1129) voted last year to consolidate their two school districts into one. It would be interesting to see what the difference is in operating costs once the transition is complete.
- JS Mill - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 2:27 pm:
=Admittedly, school districts that cover larger geographical areas would be harder to combine due to how far kids would have to travel but there must be some savings to be had in some areas.=
The savings would be in consolidating dual districts. Cook county would be a big winner there, but also areas all over the state. For large geographic rural districts, this would have the least impact on travel.
- Steve Polite - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 2:38 pm:
“Not surprised Republicans are opposed. They also have a stranglehold on state jobs too”
They don’t have a stranglehold on state jobs. The Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois decision by the U.S. Supreme Court took care of that. Political affiliation has no bearing on applicants applying for most state positions.
- Oldtimer - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 2:45 pm:
Lincoln in Logan County has three K-8 and one 9-12 School District serving in total fewer than 2,000 students. A single K-12 Unit District would have substantial admin savings and would not have the transportation issues you see in more remote areas of the state.
- Leatherneck - Friday, Mar 21, 25 @ 3:28 pm:
Speaking of townships, it looks like since her Dolton defeat Tiffany Henyard is basically mailing it in in Thornton Township. She was a no-show at the township’s special meeting last night.
CBS 2 video of last night’s Thornton Township meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ2aV2pwrXo
Most likely the Lansing Journal’s video and report will soon be forthcoming.