Never Mind Consolidating School Districts--For Real Tax Reform, How About Eliminating Townships?

One recent idea to help fill our gargantuan state budget hole (>$12 billion, by some accounts) is to force consolidation of school districts. Not only do I not think this would actually save much money, the political battle to get it done, especially downstate, is going to be a bear.

If you want to bite off a political battle, how about one that could actually have a real impact, if successful? I'm talking, of course, about eliminating the archaic and unnecessary layer of government at the Township level.

This is not my idea, or even a new idea--it's been proposed before (by, among other people, Cook County Commissioner Michael Quigley), but as you can expect, the thousands of people employed at the Township level would have something to say about this. In fact, I am friends with several elected township supervisors, but most of them are retiring or wanting to move up the political ladder anyway, so hopefully they won't hate me for raising this.

In doing some research, I came across a great paper presented last year by David K. Hamilton of Roosevelt University, entitled "Township Government: Essential or Expendable? The Case of Illinois and Cook County." You can download the whole paper here.

The author points out that Township government was developed for a rural society where travel and transportation of goods was slow and inefficient. Many states do not even have townships. In Illinois, it is hard to dispute that every service provided by the Township could not be provided instead (and much more efficiently) at the municipal or county level. Road maintenance, social services, and even tax assessment can all be done at a different level of government, thereby completely eliminating the entire Township government level (unlike consolidating school districts, where you would simply try to get efficiencies of scale by having fewer school districts, at the cost of loss of local control and dubious actual savings).

Townships are horribly inefficient providers of services, incurring incredibly high administrative costs. As just one example, the author points out that "one study found that Thornton Township spent $525,000 to hand out $220,000 in general assistance grants during the 1999-2000 fiscal year. In Palos and Orland townships, the cost of administering general assistance grants exceeded the amount of the grants themselves by 340 percent and 320 percent, respectively." (Hamilton, at 19)(emphasis added).

The author concludes,

"Township government was clearly developed for an eighteenth century rural society in which transportation was slow and difficult. If townships were not already in existence, they would not be invented or necessary for twenty-first century government. Most of the country and a number of counties in Illinois provide local government services without the need for townships. The analysis of Cook County townships indicates that township government is an unnecessary, inefficient, and duplicative form of government. Administrative costs are high and services that townships provide are now or can be more efficiently provided by the county and incorporated municipalities. Moreover, eliminating the township would promote better coordination in the delivery of social services and reduce duplication and citizen confusion as to which government to contact for specific services. With one less government involved, there should be a more seamless provision of services. Other township services could readily be provided by other governments. The county or the municipality can readily provide the ombudsman function of the assessor’s office should this function be necessary.

Combining responsibility for unincorporated roads with the county or municipality would make better use of expensive road maintenance equipment and storage facilities. Moreover, it would eliminate the double taxation for municipal residents, who are taxed once for municipal roads and then again for township roads. It would also shift more reliance away from property taxation to other taxes, as the township is much more heavily reliant on property taxes than municipalities and counties. A conservative estimate of the cost savings is at least 50 percent of the more than $80 million spent by townships. It is probable that even greater cost reductions would occur. It is also likely that services would be enhanced with the transfer of functions to other governments." (Hamilton, at 26)(emphasis added).

So, there's a modest proposal for a Monday morning. How about it, Governor Quinn and your cohorts in the General Assembly? If you want to take a firm hand in promoting some real savings (unlike those that might be realized by disrupting school district operations) and some true government reform, this looks like an idea that is ripe for the picking.