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Rauner budget ignites furor
PRICES FOR GRAIN AND DAIRY PRODUCTS REMAIN LOW
Farm incomes to fall
Towns, county officials lash out at proposed cuts By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com
Photos by Kyle Grillot – kgrillot@shawmedia.com
Carol Ziller and her daughter, Colleen, do their daily cleaning Thursday inside their dairy barn at the family farm in Grafton Township, between Huntley and Union. Net income for farmers is expected to fall by almost 32 percent this year because of high corn and soybean prices and rising expenses of farming. The Ziller family grows corn, soy and wheat along with their dairy and beef cattle.
McHenry County farmers bracing budgets for rough year By STEPHEN Di BENEDETTO sdibenedetto@shawmedia.com Farmers throughout McHenry County are bracing their budgets for a rough year as a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report projected farmers’ net income to drop 32 percent in 2015. Coming off a record year in 2013, net income for farmers in the United States could drop for the second consecutive year because prices for grain and dairy prod-
ucts remain low, according to the report. Farmers in a county known for its agrarian history already are preparing for the slow year, trying to contain expenses, such as fertilizer, seeds and fuel, to maintain a balanced budget in 2015. “It’s very disheartening,” said Huntley-area farmer Dan Ziller Jr. “We actually went back to making good money in this business to
See FARMERS, page A4
Municipal and county governments that stand to lose half of their shared state revenue don’t have a lot of love for Gov. Bruce Rauner’s tough-love 2016 budget. The provision, just one of many submitted by Rauner to start pulling the state out of an economic downward spiral, met with derision from local mayors who allege constituents will pay the price for years of state government mismanagement. Algonquin Village President John Schmitt called the idea not only “disastrous” but a “selfish” one as well, because most municipal governments have been living within their means while the state has not. “That’s what’s re- John Schmitt ally been lost in all this rhetoric – the municipalities, by and large, balance our budgets. We understand what’s available. The state hasn’t been doing that for many years, and the state, I guess, has the desire for the municipalities to stop providing police and fire protection, water, sewer or other essential services,” Schmitt said. Talk in Springfield of cutting back local governments’ share of income tax revenue is nothing new, and periodically has come up in recent years as a way to help the state either balance its books or fuel more state spending. But Rauner is serious about it, and his budget estimates that cutting the shared revenue to
Carol Ziller feeds her calves Thursday at her farm in Grafton Township. See BUDGET, page A4
Rauner administration eyes ways to close highway funding gap By JASON KEYSER The Associated Press CHICAGO – For motorists, Illinois’ reliance on rapidly diminishing federal funding to repair the state’s aging roads and bridges means wasted hours stuck on congested roads, more money spent on car repairs and lots of frustration. How to fill the gap has become yet another vexing problem for new Gov. Bruce Rauner. The Republi-
can and his advisers have signaled a readiness to consider all options, including raising the state’s fuel tax, which hasn’t been touched in 25 years. But while experts consider the most obvious and immediate solution, they also say it may be the hardest to achieve. Here’s a breakdown of the state’s road infrastructure deficit:
ROAD RAGE At the crossroads of America, Il-
BUSINESS
linois typically ranks among the top three or four states for number of bridges and total miles of roadway. Keeping up with repairs has left little money for expansion, and a growing population is straining the netBruce Rauner work. Congestion costs the Illinois economy tens of billions
LOCAL
Proposed boundary changes Preferred remap of D-158 would move about 600 Leggee Elementary students by ’17 / A3 PLANIT STYLE
Strengthening presence Martial arts businesses in McHenry County are taking new ground after being squeezed during the recession / D1
A Warrior’s Mind Huntley man starts nonprofit to help veterans find community, resources / Planit 10
of dollars a year in lost productivity, especially around Chicago, where the typical driver spends 71 hours a year stuck in traffic. The state is home to the country’s No. 1 highway bottleneck at the Jane Byrne Interchange in Chicago, where cars on average creep by at 22 mph. Statewide, poor road conditions cost Illinois drivers an extra $3.7 billion in repairs each year, according to transportation advocacy group TRIP.
A new statewide survey by the Metropolitan Planning Council found half of respondents faced some kind of daily transportation dilemma. “Thank God we haven’t had a bridge collapse, nothing dramatic like that,” said council Vice President Peter Skosey. “But the fact that every day all these millions of people are encountering these challenges,
See HIGHWAYS, page A2
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