Illinois group spends $700K in tax dollars to lobby for higher taxes

Local-government lobbying groups are using residents’ money to lobby for higher income taxes.

Whether residents realize it or not, their local governments often pay organizations to lobby for them in Springfield. In some cases, taxpayers’ own money is being used to lobby for higher taxes.

Most recently, officials in government agencies across the Chicago suburbs are lobbying against Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposal to cut state funding for local governments.

To balance the state’s books, Rauner earlier this year proposed reducing municipalities’ portion of state income-tax revenue by half, totaling $600 million. Income-tax revenue makes up about one-fifth of the $6.1 billion the state distributes to local governments every year.

Rauner’s proposal would trim just 10 percent of that amount in order to keep the state income tax low. Keeping money in taxpayers’ wallets is a good thing – the money then can be spent at local businesses, for example.

But local-government lobbying groups, including the DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference, are using residents’ money to lobby for higher income taxes.

The DuPage group launched a website, protectmytown.com, which provides a letter for people to send to the governor and legislators protesting the cut in local-government funding.

While protectmytown.com portrays the proposed cut in income-tax revenue as catastrophic, it says nothing about the recent tax cut’s positive impact on local constituents, which should be considered part of the equation.

In Wheaton, for instance, a family with the median household income of $87,000 will keep nearly $1,100 more of their income this year as a result of the tax cut. That stimulus means more sales-tax revenue for municipalities.

Yet local-government groups suggest this money is best kept in the hands of municipalities. “Keep the tax money where it belongs,” protectmytown.com declares.

Where the tax cut belongs is in residents’ wallets – not in the hands of yet another government entity. Using tax dollars to lobby otherwise does no favors to taxpayers.

The 34 members of DuPage Mayors and Managers paid nearly $700,000 in annual membership dues in the last year, according to public documents. Lobbying is one of the group’s primary purposes.