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McHenry and Nunda Township Road District officials have named Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in a lawsuit challenging a decision to afford voters to right to eliminate townships.
Pritzker signed a law in August allowing McHenry County voters to dissolve the area’s 17 townships through referendum. The new law is an initiative to reduce property taxes in McHenry County by reducing levels of government. If a township is dissolved, its operations, property and employees would be transferred to the county government. The option to eliminate both McHenry and Nunda Townships will appear on the March ballot, but the townships road districts’ officials have questioned whether the law is constitutional. […]
McHenry Township Highway Commissioner James Condon agreed that the law’s specificity to McHenry County means that it is “special legislation,” and therefore in violation of the Illinois constitution.
“It’s our understanding that the constitution doesn’t allow you to write a law that is specific to one group when that same law can be applied to all groups, in other words, to the whole state,” Condon said. “And the law they wrote, they apply only to McHenry County. So they’re singling McHenry County out.”
State Rep. David McSweeney, R-Barrington Hills, introduced the bill, which was signed into law in August. Reached by phone Friday, McSweeney wasn’t concerned about the road districts’ amended lawsuit, calling it “a complete waste of time.”
* From the Constitution…
The General Assembly shall pass no special or local law when a general law is or can be made applicable. Whether a general law is or can be made applicable shall be a matter for judicial determination.
This is a standard pilot project, so I’m figuring it’ll be fine with the courts. We shall see.
posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 8:59 am
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I hope this passes and then gets a majority of votes once on the ballot. It’s an actual attempt to reduce government costs in Illinois. We should do this for all counties.
Comment by Maximus Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 9:29 am
=== I’m figuring it’ll be fine with the courts.===
I understand judges tend to be more mature than this, but I think it’d be great if their ruling modified the law so it applied to all townships in all counties.
I’ve got no problem with people being on the dole, but we shouldn’t require them to run for office first.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 9:38 am
@Candy Dogood: The courts will either uphold the law or strike it down. If they strike it down, they will not modify it in order to make it constitutional. It’s up to the legislature to pass laws that comply with the federal and state constitutions; courts are not super-legislators that can fix a mess created by the General Assembly.
Comment by Bourbon Street Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 9:45 am
Pilot projects tend to be for limited periods of time, include some reporting requirements, etc. I think your argument that this is a “pilot project” isn’t really born out by statute. More concerning is that it set the county where it applies, not by some special characteristic such as population, size, etc.
If this was written as any township in any county having a population of less than 400,000 and more than 300,000 then I don’t think its as big of a problem. Instead, just picking one county out of the 102 seems problematic special legislation which will require the creation of after the fact rationalizations.
Comment by Just Another Anon Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 9:51 am
Nothing says you’re comfortable in the value you’re delivering to voters like suing to prevent them from voting to eliminate you.
Comment by Anonymous Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 9:52 am
===courts are not super-legislators that can fix a mess created by the General Assembly.===
This is what I meant when I said courts tend to be more mature than this.
However I think your stance ignores the process by which the State of Illinois has consistently wound up with consent decrees which act much in the same way as legislation, such as the outcome of how badly the state lost it’s argument in the Rutan decision and has labored under very specific consent decrees which it has, as an entity, consistently failed to follow.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 10:07 am
Townships are the probably the smallest part of Illinois’s local government costs. Evidently, though, the “reformers” consider them the lowest-hanging fruit. My guess is that “reforming” the more expensive units of local government, like school districts and municipalities will a lot tougher and more emotional. I’d also guess that some advocates of abolishing townships will fight especially hard to preserve the privileged place of municipalities in Illinois, regardless of their cost.
Comment by Heyseed Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 10:14 am
Gee, do they mean legislation like this?
(60 ILCS 1/28-5)
Sec. 28-5. Applicability. This Article shall apply only to a township that: (1) is within a coterminous, or substantially coterminous, municipality, (2) is located within St. Clair County, and (3) contains a territory of 23 square miles or more.
I’ve never understood how any of this County-specific legislation is constitutional, even when legislators get clever and write “Counties with a population between 307,000 and 309,000 whose names begin with an ‘M’ and the names of whose County Seats rhyme with ‘Good Stock’.” Or, of course, the ubiquitous “Counties with a population of more than 3 million.” wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
I almost hope the plaintiffs in this case prevail, not because I oppose township consolidation (I support it), but because in most cases this kind of boutique legislation is bad law. Either delegate this kind of authority to the Counties in the first place, or make the effort to come up with legislation that puts all Counties on an equal legal footing.
Comment by CEA Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 10:28 am
== My guess is that “reforming” the more expensive units of local government, like school districts and municipalities will a lot tougher and more emotional. ==
Especially schools … in a lot of small towns, all that is left of their identity is the Post Office and the elementary school, or a high school if it still exists. But any potential savings will be found by consolidating school districts and schools and (or?) consolidating the administrative overhead associated with each level. It won’t be easy and it’s mostly back office drudgry, but that’s where you may find some savings.
Comment by RNUG Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 10:32 am
===expensive units of local government===
One should probably take time to consider the basis for why those units of local government are more expensive.
Such as, the extent and magnitude of the services they cover vs whether they exist as an entity replicating services that are provided by other entities for the same general region resulting in an inefficient allocation of public resources and a burden to planning by requiring another layer of intergovernmental agreements which in turn creates another hurdle to successful capital planning.
The cost of administration of these small government entities vs. the actual amount of public services and public goods they deliver is very high by comparison to other units of government in every example I have seen.
School districts they are not.
In terms of necessity or efficacy you can compare Illinois counties with to Illinois counties without townships to see if this extra layer of patronage producing fluff is a necessity to provide public goods and services.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 10:38 am
Candy Dogood,
Could not a lot of the points you make also be applied to municipalities? Many contiguous municipalities in the metropolitan area could be consolidated for cost savings and many small municipalities statewide could be eliminated entirely, with their services provided by the county at a savings. When will we be hearing about municipal reform?
Comment by Heyseed Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 11:03 am
@Candy Dogood: I intended to limit my comments to the situation where a court is asked simply to decide whether a statute is constitutional—perhaps my comments came across broader than that. Once a court decides that a statute is unconstitutional, it does not rewrite the statute to make it constitutional.
The issue you raise about whether consent decrees are essentially a form of legislation is interesting. Perhaps it can be a CapFax question of the day when the issue of a consent decree is in the news.
Comment by Bourbon Street Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 11:05 am
Since the express purpose of law was to consolidate townships in McHenry County, it’s tough to see how the statute can be made generally applicable.
Comment by TominChicago Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 11:51 am
RNUG -
IOC via the intertubes says Illinois has 852 school districts. IF we were to use the Nevada / Florida model (1 school district / county), 752 districts disappear. IF the only cut was the Superintendent and keeping all other staff, with a total compensation package of 100/200/300/400 $thousand we’d save 75/150/225/300 $million. That’s REAL money.
Comment by Anyone Remember Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 11:55 am
RNUG -
750 - hate typing on phones.
Comment by Anyone Remember Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 11:56 am
“Townships are the probably the smallest part of Illinois’s local government costs.” It is totally impossible for any reasonable person from Chicago or Cook county to understand how corrupt some of these rural townships are.
Definitely get rid of the township highway departments, the county highway departments can buy and maintain the expensive road equipment. The township highway commissioners become crabby little dictators. I have a plat from the mid 1800s that shows the road district to be three people. The statute was changed at some point to where the road “district” is one guy. That would be like your county board being one person- tyranny. This is the last gasp of the good old boys, and good riddance. I’ll read about them in the history books.
Comment by Buford Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 2:58 pm
So, when does the county raise taxes to pay for the staff, equipment, buildings, and supplies used to replace the township resources? Trying to do this is Cook County is laughable, since the county is still trying to get towns to take over all their unincorporated territory to cut costs and services. The rural townships got nothing on Chicago or Cook County corruption.
Comment by revvedup Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 4:19 pm
“The rural townships got nothing on Chicago or Cook County corruption.” A Township Officials of Illinois (TOI) news release states that Gov. Pritzker met with Arnold Vegter and others on May 16, 2019. Vegter is the highway commissioner of Union Grove township in Whiteside county.
Take a look at “government” in Union Grove township, Illinois: no signage on the township building, no notice of township meetings, no list of all five members on the board, no way to file a FOIA to see how they are spending money, Vegter’s father Harlan, and grandfather Bill, were highway commissioners before him… You don’t know what corruption is.
Comment by Buford Monday, Feb 3, 20 @ 10:51 pm