It seems that the great(?) state of Illinois is home to nearly 8,500 local governmental units. Are you surprised? I didn’t think so. But what is surprising is that 6,026 are empowered to raise taxes, the highest in the nation. Texas is #2 with about 5,150 local governmental units and a population over 50% higher.
Now we know that most of these entities feed at the property tax trough which is why my property taxes have increased nearly 300% in twenty years. The phrase “who watches the Watchmen” comes to mind.
According to a Reuter’s analysis of property tax data, shows that the sheer number of local government entities, and a complete lack of any oversight of their operations, has lead to inefficient spending of taxpayer (my) money, whether through duplication of services or high overhead costs, ridiculous pensions and benefits. They also believe that there are signs of nepotism within some of the governmental authorities…can you believe that is happening in Illinois.
There also seems to be no central repository of data for these entities. So no simple Freedom of Information Act to find out easily what is going on. According to the article the Comptroller office does not audit the financial reports that are sent to it from the local governmental units. That gives me have a warm fuzzy feeling. Again, what can go wrong with no oversight of these dollars…
On average, Illinois’ effective property taxes are the third highest in the U.S. at 1.92 percent of residential property values, only behind New Jersey and New Hampshire, according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation. (New Hampshire, unlike Illinois and New Jersey, doesn’t have a state income tax or a state sales tax.)
So we are paying dearly our hard earned dollars so a governmental employee who is probably completely unnecessary can enjoy themselves. Remember most of these people are not elected. They just need to get the main relative elected to keep the money flowing.
Government loves to add oversight and regulations to private industry at a huge expense. Too bad they refuse to do it on themselves. Look at the duties of some elected positions. They have essentially been eliminated by computers, we just never eliminated them form existence. The assessor’s offices come to mind for this one.