ILL-inois: County board wisely blocks use of museum tax money for juvenile prison

Illinois River at Peoria Heights

Yes, for now the funding request is blocked, but the real Illinois lesson is this: once the bureaucrats have their hands in your purse they'll try to take whatever they can.

And this story doesn't come from Chicago or East St. Louis but a conservative-leaning area of this once great state.

From the Peoria Journal Star:

Earlier this month, members of a Peoria County Board committee put up a roadblock against spending some of your money that most of us probably didn't even know was being spent.

Here's what we mean.

The operations committee unanimously rejected a request to spend $105,000 for upgrades to the temperature controls at the juvenile detention center, because of the source of the funds — revenue from the public facilities sales tax.

Readers will remember that as the one that narrowly got approved by county voters, with the selling point being that the tax proceeds would be used to build the Peoria Riverfront Museum. That alone was a tough sell for many people.

Peoria County rakes in nearly $2 million extra from that tax, which officials have used to make bond payments and to raze an old work camp.

Here's a novel idea: Why not give back the extra money to Peoria County taxpayers? Or lower the tax?

Or just get rid of it?

But that is not how things are done in ILL-inois.

Related posts:

• Ronald Reagan Trail: Peoria Heights
• Ronald Reagan Trail: Chillicothe