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To be more effective, Rauner and the good guys need an army of volunteer tax district watchdogs.

Now is the time.

There is a new sheriff in town.

Pick a taxing district and watch the dog.

Now you have some political cover.

Expose the shenanigans.

Politicians have to horse trade, they don’t have the time to watch all the taxing districts or even adequately consider all the legislation and policies that come across their desk.

They need your help.

Tax District Watchdog.

An all volunteer army.

Except the army does not yet exist.

The Better Government Association has some training for you.

Where’s the army been the last 44 years?

Well, there has been no army.

There has been no organization.

Better Government Association has some FOIA workshops and training on its website.

That’s the power of the special interest groups including the kings of special interest groups, public sector unions.

Organization.

Organized Labor.

Right now, Organized Labor has no effective counter at the local level.

We need Organized Taxpayers to keep Organized Labor honest.

In most taxing districts, there is not even an unorganized watch dog.

We need people watching the cookie jar.

The money at the state level will be drying up.

Now at the local level the taxing districts will be crying for money, and they will try to get it in the form of non-referendum bonds, referendum bonds, and tax hike referendums.

You need to start right now to understand the taxing district finances to prepare for their referendum spin.

In addition to Rauner reigning in spending, we have unfunded pension and unfunded healthcare liabilities which have been piling up for years.

An unfunded liability means the funds were not funded when they should have been, so they have to be funded in the future.

The future is now.

At some point those payments start escalating to fund the pensions and retiree healthcare.

At some point all the legislative pension benefit hikes, and legislative retiree healthcare hikes, and collective bargaining and administrator salary hikes, start taking a toll.

You have the American Reinvestment and Recovery money drying up at the Federal Revenue.

So as a recap.

State funding drying up.

Kicking the can on unfunded pensions and retiree healthcare drying up to a certain extent, although a lot of that will continue).

Federal funding drying up.

Those are sources of revenue.

In the case of pensions and retiree healthcare, to explain, if the taxing district does not adequately fund the pension or retiree healthcare plan, that money can be used for other things, such as salary hikes, which create an ever larger unfunded pension.

So when the public sector employees claim the state or local taxing district hasn’t adequately funded their pension, guess what, some or quite a bit of that diverted money went to their salary hikes, which in turn hikes their pension.

Pension insanity.

So Federal, State, and unfunded pension and retiree healthcare “funding” is drying up.

How will that revenue be replaced?

The special interest groups and taxing districts will often try to replace that revenue with non-referendum bond, referendum bond, and tax hike revenue.

And a lot of them will blame Rauner for cutting state funding.

So we need local watchdogs to explain the story and the true financial picture of taxing districts.

Many taxing districts tend to spin the story in their favor, omitting key information.

The tax watchdog reveals the hidden information.

We can do it, yes we can, if we can’t do it, no one can.

Join the team!

Adopt a taxing district!

Go team Go!

Rauner + McHenry County Blog & other Government Watchdogs + Local Tax District Watchdogs.

The formula to taxing district transparency.

We Want You!

Make the Commitment.

Claim your District.

The plan is simple.

Pick a taxing district and watchdog it.

Disseminate the information to McHenry County Blog and elsewhere as you see fit.