Metro East Sun

Residents of Belleville, Illinois, will be receiving a tax break after the Belleville City Council voted to dissolve the city’s township recently  -- a plan predicted to save taxpayers $260,000 each year.

Beginning next May, the city of Belleville will assume the township’s sole function of dispensing financial aid to roughly 40 qualifying residents.

In 2015, Belleville Township collected more than $500,000 from taxpayers. Approximately $175,000 of the nearly $550,000 in tax dollars collected was used to fund general assistance and community projects, while the remainder -- approximately $375,000 – went toward paying the administrative salaries of six employees and covering administrative expenses.

“Illinois has more layers of local government than any state in the nation,” Mindy Ruckman, policy analyst at the Illinois Policy Institute, recently told Metro East Sun. “We have about 7,000 municipal and local governments. Each of these units of governments adds to the cost of property taxes. So every time there are more units of local government, that means that the property tax burden is going to be higher and more burdensome.”

Ruckman said Texas, by comparison, is much larger than Illinois but has approximately 2,000 fewer units of government.

Florida is another example. It has approximately 7 million more residents than Illinois, yet only has about 1,500 units of local government, with residents paying significantly lower property taxes than Illinois residents.

“In some cases, like the case of Belleville Township, the township governed over the exact same area of the Belleville City,” she said. “The only service that the Belleville Township provided was to administer what was called the vernal assistance program. Basically, this program gave out financial aid to lower-income residents who met certain qualifications. In that area, it happened to be a very small amount -- approximately 40 people -- who received this service.”

In Belleville Township, taxpayers were paying for overhead costs and services the majority of people didn’t benefit from, not to mention a service that could have easily been provided by the city council itself, Ruckman said.

“There have been a lot of historical proposals that have been introduced in the Illinois General Assembly,” she said. “This past legislative session, Illinois Policy Action did have one bill, House Bill 4501, and that bill would have allowed county boards to dissolve certain units of government within their boundaries. Unfortunately, this bill did not pass and become law.”

Sponsored by state Rep. Sam Yingling (D-Grayslake), HB 4501passed the House on April 19 by a 93-19 vote but stalled in the Senate.

Ruckman said a bill like HB 4501 is important because of the way consolidation is currently written into Illinois statutes.

“Currently, there are provisions that a county can dissolve townships within its borders,” she said. “The problem with this bill is that it is a kind of all-or-nothing bill. In order for a county to dissolve townships, they have to dissolve all of the townships in their county, rather than just one.”

In the case of Belleville, Ruckman explained, the General Assembly had to pass a very specific bill that targeted Belleville itself in order for the bill to pass.

“The bill that allowed Belleville to dissolve their township does not apply to other townships and other cities across the state, which is unfortunate, but that is how it is written,” she said. “Consolidation, whether it is the consolidation of townships or other government entities, it saves taxpayer’s money and it reduces redundant layers of government. It is that simple.”