WurfWhile

DuPage County Board Chair Robert Schillerstrom next year will have spent all of the $75 million from the DuPage Water Commission funds he raided in 2003 at $15 million a year. The money was supposed to be for homeland security spending - it really was to delay reckoning with a county budget that has grown beyond the revenue collected. Now DuPage is facing a projected $45 million budget deficit in two years at current spending rates.

We’ve been hearing about the need to raise taxes since just before the 2004 election. We’ve heard from DuPage County Board Chair Robert Schillerstrom that we’ll have to dramatically cut county social services if we don’t raise taxes (why other areas couldn’t be cut wasn’t explained). We’ve heard, more recently, what a 20% across the board cut would mean to our county government and the people that depend on it to function, and function well.

The bottom-line is simple. After all this public ‘agonizing’ I expect we’ll get the tax increases (a “sin” tax on cigarettes and/or a regressive sales tax) to plug up the hole created by ignoring the structural deficit DuPage has had for years - a budget hole that raiding DuPage tax dollars from the Water Commission helped plug up temporarily. A fiscally responsible county board would not have resorted to a water money gimmick to forestall the inevitable. They would have looked for structural solutions before being forced to do so. Unfortunately the DuPage County Board looked to gimmicks first - and now with the gimmick used up they will raise taxes. DuPage County residents deserve better.