The newspaper's assertion regarding home rule is not is not entirely accurate. Illinois municipalities which were at 25,000, or grow to this number, are automatically granted home rule status under the 1970 Illinois Constitution. Any municipality or county may become home rule by referendum. So far the only Illinois County to be home rule is Cook. Rockford voters took away home rule by a citizen led initiative in the 1980s which Illinois statutes allow however, the task of collecting 10% of registered voters' signatures is daunting but doable. If the census counts Freeport at less than 25,000 we will not cease to be home rule. However the city clerk will be required to put the question to Freeport voters if the same question has not been voted upon in the previous two years. Here is the exact statute:
If the City of Freeport has been being responsible with its use of these vast and liberal home rule powers, why would City Manager Crow or any member of the Freeport City Council be afraid of a referendum asking voters if we wished to remain home rule?
As stated above home rule was given to all Illinois' municipalities with a population of 25,000 or more when the 1970 Illinois Constitution was adopted. Home rule units have broad powers to tax and to incur debt without limitation. Home rule units are not necessarily bound by state statutes that other units of government must follow (see Tutty's previous article) unless the Illinois General Assembly sees fit to specifically "preempt" home rule powers. An example of this state preemption is the "property transfer tax" that we have in Freeport. The Freeport City Council with the administration of Mayor Richard Wies followed the lead of other home rule municipalities and created this tax in 1992. Sometime later the Illinois General Assembly preempted this power and now home rule units must pass a referedum to create a property transfer tax. Freeport and other municipalities' transfer taxes have been grandfathered, hence the seller of any Freeport property will pay four-dollars per every $1,000 of sale price. In some places the buyer pays and there may be rules about such things as having the water bill or others things paid before stamps are issued. Always look for the hidden property taxes when you buy a property in Illinois, thanks to home rule, it can vary from town to town.
Home rule is the reason there has not been one singe binding referendum regarding taxes or borrowing, despite plenty of both within the City of Freeport. Since 1992 the Freeport City Council has been using home rule as their ace-in-the-hole. Every time a budget came up short or there was a special "economic development" project the city council just could not live without, a tax was created and bonds were floated---not necessarily in that order. And here we are today.
Moving to a city manager form of government has proven that city managers are as adept at abusing home rule powers as elected mayors and the Freeport City Council is only too willing to go along with nary a public question raised.
Whenever the city council suspends the rules to push a general obligation bond issue through in a single reading with less than ten minutes of real public discussion. That's abuse of home rule powers period. Without home rule a referendum would be required on any general obligation bond. The city council uses home rule to avoid so much as public notice or public hearing. They borrow money and put essentially what is a lien against our property without so much as formally telling Freeport citizens, the ones that must retire the debt.
However, the most recent $2.7 million bond issue shows just how secretive (or inept) the Freeport City Council and Freeport City Clerk truly are, according to an "Extract of Mintues" which was made a part of the bond ordinance (#2019-21) and included with the agenda for the April 1, 2019 meeting. This "Extract of Minutes" only had one sentence/paragraph of real content, all the rest was just technical items such as who was there and who approved the motion and how the individual council members voted. Here is a picture of this paragraph, which is essentially a lie that has been certified by the Freeport City Clerk as "true and correct". Here is the sentence/paragraph as contained in the certified (legally admissible) copy of Ordinance #2019-21 beginning with "The Mayor announced...".
Moving to a city manager form of government has proven that city managers are as adept at abusing home rule powers as elected mayors and the Freeport City Council is only too willing to go along with nary a public question raised.
Whenever the city council suspends the rules to push a general obligation bond issue through in a single reading with less than ten minutes of real public discussion. That's abuse of home rule powers period. Without home rule a referendum would be required on any general obligation bond. The city council uses home rule to avoid so much as public notice or public hearing. They borrow money and put essentially what is a lien against our property without so much as formally telling Freeport citizens, the ones that must retire the debt.
However, the most recent $2.7 million bond issue shows just how secretive (or inept) the Freeport City Council and Freeport City Clerk truly are, according to an "Extract of Mintues" which was made a part of the bond ordinance (#2019-21) and included with the agenda for the April 1, 2019 meeting. This "Extract of Minutes" only had one sentence/paragraph of real content, all the rest was just technical items such as who was there and who approved the motion and how the individual council members voted. Here is a picture of this paragraph, which is essentially a lie that has been certified by the Freeport City Clerk as "true and correct". Here is the sentence/paragraph as contained in the certified (legally admissible) copy of Ordinance #2019-21 beginning with "The Mayor announced...".
First off, Mayor Jodi Miller did not "announce" anything, at the beginning of the meeting she asked a representative of Spear Financial to take the podium for a "presentation of the bond financing". The representative from Spear said it would be a 15-year bond issue with an interest rate of 3.05%. Tutty thinks the interest rate came in higher than this presentation. Perhaps Manager Crow or Mayor Miller can use their Sunday Journal-Standard column to explain the math behind the picture which follows so that these numbers contained in the certified ordinance work out to 3.05% interest rate. Tutty's hope is the math can be explained and that the city council and public at large were not misled as to the actual interest amount.
Alderman McClanathan did ask the Spear representative about Freeport's bond rating which it was noted is suffering from pensions, outstanding debt, and a weak economy. So our city council, in response....borrows more money.
Again, back to the "Extract of Minutes" and the things Mayor Miller, through approved and certified meeting minutes is alleged to have "announced" for the city council and public at large benefit but were never actually disclosed during the meeting. Not one single time did the term "home rule" come up and not once was there mention of "direct annual tax" or of the "tax levy for said bonds".
Tutty encourages readers, including the Freeport City Council to go back and watch the video (there is a link at the bottom of this paragraph) of the meeting and then ask yourselves why are official and certified City of Freeport documents more fiction than fact. How does that happen? We have a mayor, a city manager, eight council members and a couple of attorneys yet it takes Tutty to read the agendas, the finished ordinances and it's associated filings, to notice that the City of Freeport has essentially certified a lie? Are any of them down there actually reading the things in front of them? And if they are, why did they not do what they said they did? These are legal documents and knowingly certifying the false should come with a penalty in Tutty's opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH83yGaX1ng&t=2221s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH83yGaX1ng&t=2221s
One interesting thing that did get uttered by Manager Crow was at the beginning of the meeting right after the representative from Spear addressed the council, Manager Crow said that they'd been "contacted by several area banks that purchased the bonds". This was said before the Freeport City Council voted to even approve said measure. This begs the question as to if the Freeport City Council and Mayor Miller are working for Freeport citizens or the bankers that Manager Crow sits with on the board of the Freeport Partnership?
This issue points out, a best the haphazard way business has been conducted at Freeport City Hall and is reason enough why the Freeport City Council should never, ever suspend the rules unless there is a bona fide emergency. Obviously, the Freeport Council needs more time to read and thoroughly review that which has obviously slipped past them, although it was right in front of them the entire time. How do official documents become more fiction than fact Freeport City Council?
This city council has now earned the reputation of being a first reading, suspend the rules, figure it out later, public body. In Tutty's humble opinion, the citizens of Freeport deserve much better than the facts this post discloses.
As always, yours in honesty, Tutty Baker, tutty.baker@gmail.com
