The Illinois Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on the question of whether a state constitutional amendment can force Cook County and other local home rule governments in Illinois to spend local transportation-related tax money on actual transportation improvement projects, and not local government operations.
On May 26, the state Supreme Court granted a petition from a coalition of road construction contractors, seeking permission to appeal a lower appellate court’s ruling that declared the state’s transportation funding lockbox amendment doesn’t actually apply to hundreds of millions of dollars in transportation taxes Cook County collects annually from vehicle owners and others.
Voters added the so-called Safe Roads Amendment to the state constitution in 2016. The amendment ostensibly requires the state and all units of government in Illinois to spend money collected from taxes and fees on transportation, solely on transportation work and projects – essentially placing that money in a transportation “lockbox,” walled off from politicians who would otherwise use the money for other purposes.
However, in the years since, Cook County has continued to plow nearly $250 million in transportation funding into operations funded by the county’s Public Safety Fund.
Cook County has justified that spending by arguing the Safe Roads Amendment does not apply to the county or other units of local home rule government in Illinois, which are granted special taxing powers under the Illinois state constitution.
The county uses the funds to help pay for spending at the Cook County Sheriff’s Office and other county offices that work within the criminal justice system.
However, in 2018, the coalition of road builders filed suit, asserting Cook County’s interpretation of the amendment defies a plain reading of the amendment’s directives.
Plaintiffs in the action include the Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Association; the Federation of Women Contractors; the Illinois Association of Aggregate Producers; Associated General Contractors of Illinois; Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association; Illinois Ready Mixed Concrete Association; Great Lakes Construction Association; American Council of Engineering Companies Illinois Chapter; Chicagoland Associated General Contractors; Underground Contractors Association of Illinois; and Illinois Concrete Pipe Association.
The road builders argued the amendment should be interpreted to strictly require Cook County and all units of government in Illinois to dedicate all transportation-related taxes and fees to pay for work on roads, bridges, mass transit and other real transportation projects.
In response, Cook County has argued allowing that interpretation to stand would allow transportation contractors to use the courts to oversee and dictate transportation spending among local governments throughout the state.
To date, a Cook County judge and the Illinois First District Appellate Court in Chicago have backed the county’s interpretation of the amendment.
The First District court ruled in March that language elsewhere in the amendment contradicts the language in the amendment that the road builders rely upon.
The appellate justices said the amendment should be read to apply only to taxes or fees raised by state law, or governed by state law, and not to taxes or fees raised by local home rule ordinance, as Cook County’s have been.
Following the ruling, the road builders appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, arguing the appellate justices “cobbled together” a reasoning that would allow them to impose restrictions on the reach of a constitutional amendment, when the amendment contains no such restrictions.
They argued allowing that ruling to stand will essentially allow local governments in Illinois to all but ignore the lockbox amendment altogether, betraying the understanding voters had when they voted overwhelmingly to approve the Safe Roads Amendment.
The case will be docketed for a hearing before the state Supreme Court in coming months.
The road builders are represented by attorneys Gino L. DiVito, John M. Fitzgerald and Amanda N. Catalano, of the firm of Tabet DiVito & Rothstein LLC, of Chicago.
The county has been represented by the office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, including assistant state’s attorneys Cathy McNeil Stein, Martha Victoria Jimenez and James Beligratis.