Starting today, Illinois Comptroller Susana A. Mendoza is suspending “offset” payments to the Village of Orland Park. “Offsets” refers to money collected from state payments our office withholds from people who owe traffic tickets or other money to municipalities such as Orland Park.
These payments are worth about $120,000 a year to the village.
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The IOC is taking this action because Orland Park has failed for two years to file its statutorily required annual financial reports with this office. These reports are an important tool in tracking local government spending and offer transparency to taxpayers wondering how their tax money is being used.
“We take very seriously our statutory obligation to collect annual financial reports from municipalities around Illinois,” Comptroller Mendoza said. “We very rarely use tools like this to enforce compliance, but we have been asking for two years.”
Today’s action by the Illinois Office of Comptroller (IOC) mirrors the action Comptroller Mendoza took two months ago against the Village of Dolton, which likewise was two years behind on filing its annual financial reports.
Dolton was even more delinquent than Orland Park, by about eight months, because Orland Park operates on a different fiscal year.
Illinois has more than 7,000 units of governments which must file reports with the IOC. Cities; mosquito abatement districts; fire protection districts, townships and more. The IOC posts these reports online so taxpayers can see how their money is being spent.
The vast majority of governments have no problem meeting deadlines. When local governments are late, the office works with them to try to encourage them to come into compliance.
“It’s in taxpayers’ best interests for us to convince local governments to keep up to date with their statutory obligations,” Mendoza said. “We don’t take these steps lightly. This is only the second time we have cut off off-set funds.”
The action was taken against Dolton on August 15th because for two years the administration of Mayor Tiffany Henyard had willfully refused to turn over the annual reports all municipalities are required to file with the Illinois Office of Comptroller, including an annual financial report, a financial audit, and three Tax Increment Financing District (TIF) reports. Her administration had stopped communicating with our office.
Since then, Dolton’s village administrator, working with some of the village trustees, has been communicating with our office and preparing the way for our forced audit team to come in and work with village staffers to help complete the overdue financial reports.
Working with us could save the village from fines that could total $78,600 or more.
Orland Park, in contrast, never stopped communicating with our office, but has failed for two years now to turn in reports.
As with Dolton, our office has put Orland Park on notice that the next steps could be a forced audit and fines that currently total: $27,720.
That can all be avoided if the village comes into compliance by submitting the overdue reports. The village has told our office that they are on track to submit the overdue reports.
“We would always prefer to have local governments come into compliance with their statutory obligations,” Comptroller Mendoza said. “But my office will not hesitate to use the tools at our disposal to safeguard taxpayers’ interests if governments are willfully ignoring the law.”
Our office can assess fines of approximately $7,000 per year per unfiled report, totaling approximately $27,720 for Orland Park as of today. That would be in addition to the roughly $120,000 the Village could lose in offset payments our office sends the village on an annual basis if its administration does not resume filing reports.
The village last filed its 2021 reports in 2023. But the 2022 and 2023 reports – the financial audit; annual financial report and Tax Increment Finance District report – are unfiled and delinquent.
Offset payments will resume as soon as the Village of Orland Park comes into compliance.
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