It appears that the Register Star is backing off of the view of its original news article—SEE: http://boonecountywatchdog.blogspot.com/2015/08/report-poplar-grove-incorrectly-billed.html Based upon the Register Star’s limited coverage of Boone County, who persuaded the paper to write the original article on its special audit?
Both Poplar Groves Administrator and Village President responded with a letter to the editor. SEE: http://boonecountywatchdog.blogspot.com/2015/08/village-administrator-turnaround-was.html and http://boonecountywatchdog.blogspot.com/2015/08/village-president-our-financial-house.html
By The Editorial Board
Rockford Register StarPosted Aug. 23, 2015 at 5:18 PM
The things that the village of Poplar Grove was doing wrong don’t matter as much as what was done right.All kinds of inefficiencies, such as haphazard record-keeping and disorganized cash management, were uncovered in an audit of the village’s operations.“We asked for this independent review. Tell us our deficiencies and provide us the recommendations needed to put in place the necessary controls. This was a bold initiative very few municipalities have the courage to do,” village President John Neitzel wrote in a guest column that was published in Sunday’s Register Star.Problems are getting fixed, a deficit is being turned into a surplus, and a growing village appears to be on the right track.But for every Poplar Grove willing to ask for recommendations and implement them, there are hundreds — perhaps thousands — of other units of government in Illinois that are inept when it comes to handling taxpayers’ money.Illinois has nearly 7,000 units of government. Some of them make sense: cities, counties, villages. But then you have fire protection districts, mosquito-abatement districts, buggy-whip districts. OK, we made the last one up, but we wouldn’t be surprised if there were an equally obscure taxing entity out there.Illinois has the second-highest property tax rate in the country, according to the Tax Foundation. All those layers of government contribute to Illinois' high tax rates. To think otherwise would be naïve.The only state with higher property taxes is New Jersey. What do New Jersey and Illinois have in common? Both are considered at the top of the corruption business, but that’s a topic for another day.Winnebago County has 86 taxing bodies, and most of them have increased their levies during the past few tax cycles. You don’t see all of them on your tax bill, but you see enough entities to make your head swim.Even if the big taxing entities — such as the School District, county and city — hold the line on their levies, the little guys still eat up a nice chunk of your change.The situation is so ridiculous that no one noticed when one taxing entity went missing. As our colleague Chuck Sweeny pointed out in an Aug. 12 column, the Greenfield Sanitary District near Joliet exists in name only. The last known member of the board died a decade ago.Oh, and because no one noticed, residents of the Greenfield district could be on the hook for $2,000 each to Joliet for sewage treatment. That’s money that was supposed to be collected over the years by the Greenfield district.
Joliet also is owed money by the South Ridgewood Sanitary District. We doubt the Joliet area is unique in its level of bureaucracy.Instead of pushing legislation demanding that taxing districts look at ways to consolidate, the General Assembly wanted to make it easier to create a city or village. Gov. Bruce Rauner wisely vetoed that measure.Kudos to Poplar Grove for its “bold initiative” and “courage.” We wish there were more Poplar Groves and a lot fewer of all those other taxing entities that don’t know what they’re doing.
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