The Future of Illinois : Sprawl, Inefficiency and Bankruptcy?

City of Blue Island , Township of Worth , County of Cook , Illinois , USA

Its decision time in Illinois and states around the country as solvency and liabilities collide with public service obligations. Illinois state representatives responded passing a 66% increase in taxes to help to bridge the gap but with no real vision for making Illinois a fiscally sustainable place were people want to live and work.  

So where do we go from here?  How do we turn this state and local municipality fiscal crisis around?  What alternative options to taxing(Democrats) and austerity(Republicans) do we have?  Apart from effectively limiting the scope of the debate they fail to build on, or highlight the comparative examples, efficiencies and potential opportunities that actually exist within our borders. Examples that leadership must foster for sustainable growth and budgetary recovery.  The lessons of the crisis for state officials must be to foster the intrinsic strengths and comparative advantages in order to increase exports and facilitate growth.  Living in the Chicago metro it is easy to forget that what we still do in this state is grow and process food like corn, wheat and soybeans. It is a problem then that  Illinois lost 67,900 acres of prime farmland to development from 1987-1992, the fifth highest rate in the country, according to the American Farmland Trust. The loss accelerated to 160,900 acres from 1992-1997, a 137 percent increase. Nationally, according to the 2007 Natural Resources Inventory, 4,080,300 acres of active agricultural land was lost to development between 2002 and 2007 - an area roughly the size of Massachusetts.  We are blessed to have this productive resource and legislators should strive to preserve it for productive use. 

But enough of the agrarian altruism.  An equally important input in the solvency equation for the state is the cost burden of maintaining essential services.  Developing land previously zoned as agricultural by definition adds to the cost burden of the state.  New roads, schools, police departments, library's, public works departments, city councils, water and reclamation-- the list goes on and on all necessary to service these newly developed or expanding towns.  Furthermore, limitlessly increasing the supply of housing, which effectively lowers the value of all existing homes, is also an important issue for local communities. 

   

Another aspect of the cost equation that needs attention is the cost of general administration. Consider your own towns organization and the number of people who live there then multiply by the number of local governments in the metro area alone. Each layer--city, township, county and state, represents additional layers of bureaucracy that add to the overall cost. This multi-tiered bureaucracy is inherently inefficient for the size of the populations they service and the opportunity for consolidation .  Local administrations need to merge, and combine resources in order to more effectively provide services while holding down cost. 

Arguably, had policies been in place 10 years ago to better coordinate land development, agricultural rezoning andlocal government efficiency we could have limited the states fiscal crisis. So how do we proceed? Fortunately, there already exists an incredibly successful example of this type of development planning, Metro,  the regional governmental agency for the  Portland metropolitan area, and the only directly-elected metropolitan planning organization in the US.  Metro's master plan known as The 2040 Growth Concept represents a form of development commonly known as New Urbanism.  The focus is on ease of public transportation and mixed use high to mixed density developments.  The organization manages land use and urban planning in order to provide for efficiencies in public services like parks and transportation including the public transit system and is specifically designed to minimize sprawl.  Coordination between cities and counties, establishing what are commonly known as urban growth boundaries, is the new imperative for state and regional planning and could be a model for use in Illinois. 

As we look to compete globally it is imperative that state and municipalities organize and coordinate land use and its associated costs relative to public goods and service requirements.  If we can take this lesson from the financial crisis and strengthen existing communities with the type of investment and critical infrastructure necessary for them to flourish we will have come a long way toward a sustainable future for the region and lower costs and taxes for businesses and individuals.