Letter to the Editor: Glencoe Financial State of the Village

The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization I formed, called the Institute for Truth in Accounting, has been diligently working for a year to calculate a “Financial State of the State” for each state. 

We identified Illinois as one of our “Sinkhole” states, because as of June 30, 2009 its financial condition was third worst with a taxpayers’ burden of $110.6 billion --- $26,800 per taxpayer. 

Read last week's

This burden represents the amount of bills past elected officials have incurred, but not paid, so future taxpayers will be burdened with them.

Because my village’s financial report was just issued I decided to do Glencoe’s “Financial State of the Village”. 

What I found was the Village taxpayers’ burden is $17.3 million --- $5,800, per taxpayer. Many of the Village’s unpaid bills relate to deferred compensation, such as pension and retirees’ health care obligations. 

The Village’s share of the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund was overfunded until 2002. Then in 2008 the value of the plan’s assets went down by almost $2 million and the accrued liability went up by $2 million, leaving the plan underfunded by more than $4 million. The Police Pension Fund, which the Board by governmental accounting standards has been overfunding, has an unfunded liability of almost $15 million; nearly five times the amount of payroll.

Our current Village president has acknowledged these “major challenges," while also saying “the Village stands in generally good financial and physical shape."

Citizens need to focus on these issues, especially during these tough financial times.

Sheila Weinberg
Founder and C.E.O.
Institute for Truth in Accounting
www.truthinaccounting.org

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