Local Democrats are pushing a "Trust Local" campaign, to get what in Illinois is called "home rule", which pretty much deregulates localities, taking limits off what they can borrow and tax.
Home rule has only existed in Illinois for about 40 years, and over that time municipal debt and local taxes have skyrocketed. There has been a long series of articles over the last few months in the Chicago Tribune documenting how most of this debt has been wasted on Taj Mahal projects like Toyota Stadium in Bridgeview, built by and for the benefit of insiders.
Say what you want about our State House and Senate (and I say mostly negative things about them!), their micromanagement of localities does put limits on local governments that probably wouldn't be there if there was home rule.
Sorry Mayor Stahura, but you've wasted enough money with your "revitalization" of Whiting (that baseball stadium is a joke). Someday in the not so distant future, when all that new equipment at BP is fully depreciated, the property tax money is not going to be there to pay for upkeep of all these projects. You'll be long gone by then, but future Whiting-ers will be stuck with that legacy.
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The cure for this is simple, calculate the costs and the additional burden in taxation. It isn't just white elephants that we're failing to do that with. We also fail to do it with essential infrastructure which is why we're in the hole for more than 1 trillion dollars in the US just on replacing water pipes. See the "Buried No More" study.
Like government run Water Parks?
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