Special Districts: America’s Shadow Governments
When I teach about the property tax at Northern Illinois University, I play a game with my public administration graduate students. I ask the homeowners in the class to dig out their property tax bill and share it with the class. We go line by line looking at the millage rates of each levy and examine who is doing the levying. Some, like the county, the city/village or the school district(s) are easy to identify. But other line items are somewhat more obscure, like mosquito abatement districts, conservation districts, civic center authorities, joint water authorities and on and on.
This naturally leads to conversations about why these specific services are provided by a special district rather than a general government and whether this arrangement leads to higher taxes. We discuss whether, if there was a different vehicle for funding these services, property taxes might go down. In my state of Illinois, home to the largest number of independent local governments in the country, this is a particularly important question. But like many questions like this, there are no easy answers.
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