- Fri Nov 29, 2013 2:57 pm
#32983
Who would have figured? :shock:
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — While Illinois lacks in the quality of its government — Thanks, Blagojevich — the state certainly has a lot of it. A new report from the Illinois Policy Institute shows Illinois leads the nation in the number of government districts and taxes. “There are a number of government services that exist only to provide government services to government services,” Costin said. “These are dependent governments.”
MORE IS NOT BETTER: Illinois has the most units of government in the country.
Illinois, according to Costin’s study, has 6,963 units of local government. Texas has 4,147, and California has 4,425, even though both states have more than twice as many people as Illinois. The state of Illinois collected $36.4 billion in taxes during 2012, $6 billion more than in 2011. Services to citizens have declined with the increased spending, the state’s backlog of unpaid bills has increased.
Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka said Illinois has $8.8 billion in unpaid or late bills, one of the highest in the Nation.
Illinois’ 2011 “temporary” income tax increases were supposed to erase the backlog of bills, but Topinka has said Democratic state lawmakers have simply found new ways to spend that money and instead unpaid bills have only grown.
