“Local governments such as ours have led the way in pursuing and implementing innovative means to reduce the cost of providing services to our residents and businesses. We have reduced our payrolls, reorganized our services and found ways to simply do more with less,” stated NWMC President and Village of Wilmette President Christopher Canning during his opening remarks, “Yet, all of us know that more work needs to be done.”

 

The 2012 NWMC Legislative Program outlines solutions to the challenges faced by local governments. One primary focus of the Legislative Program highlights the need to ensure the fiscal stability of communities by preventing the loss of local government revenues.

 

“Our largest concern, especially in light of the lagging rebound in revenues, is the continued threat of cuts to the locally generated share of state collected revenue, such as the recent attempts to divert the Local Government Distributive Fund,” said Evanston Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl, co-chair of the NWMC Legislative Committee, “Our straightforward message to our state officials is to please work to balance your budget without diverting this or other critical local government revenue sources.” 

 

The Legislative Program also highlights a number of ways the state could help reduce the escalating local government labor costs, including public safety pension reform, preventing abuse in the award of lifetime healthcare benefits to injured workers and changing the interest arbitration process.

 

“In Hoffman Estates, after making cuts to all non-public safety employees, we had no alternative but to try to work with our police and fire employees to implement similar cuts. The interest arbitration process, which is severely out of balance, made it nearly impossible to reach a fair agreement during these negotiations,” pointed out Hoffman Estates Mayor Bill McLeod, co-chair of the NWMC Legislative Committee, “Arbitrators often ignore the municipality’s fiscal conditions and believe that local government should simply raise taxes to afford generous arbitration awards.”    

 

The Northwest Municipal Conference utilizes the annual Legislative Program to guide our legislative efforts in Washington and Springfield.