Texas, like Illinois, splits its sales tax collections with local governments. Unlike Illinois, its economy and tax base are growing. Result: Texas today announced it will share almost $700 million with localities just for collections in October. That’s a whopping increase of 10.8% over October 2016 — an additional $75 million for Texas towns and cities for just one month. In Illinois, meanwhile, sales tax collections have been close to flat, as reported in the most recent report from Illinois’ Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. And the state recently reduced the portion it shares with municipalities by subtracting a

Danville, Waukegan, Normal, Palatine, Hoffman Estates, Lake Zurich,  Elgin, Peoria, Normal are just a few of many I’ve seen reported in the last two days. The list goes on from communities large and small in Illinois, all scraping for more revenue. Sorry to you readers who sent others we haven’t printed. If we linked to all of them, our homepage would be overwhelmed with the same story. It’s already beyond crisis. Illinois already has the highest property tax rates in the nation. Further increases will accelerate the death spiral. Municipalities have very limited options beyond property taxes. Some are looking