Kane transit cash talk goes from 'I want' to 'we need'

Seems there's nothing quite like a big pile of somebody else's money to make politicians' eyes light up and the saliva begin to flow.

"When it began to dawn on people that we had a new revenue source, my phone started ringing," said Kane County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay.

"I heard a lot of 'I want, I want, I want.'"

Knowing that $12 million to $15 million per year in new transit sales tax cash was a lot of temptation to do the wrong thing, McConnaughay decided the county board needed some rules for its distribution. She split board members into discussion groups and eventually brought them all back together. Then county mayors were engaged. Many of those discussions started off on a rather "porkish" foot, but they didn't end that way.

"It actually stimulated some of the best public policy discussion by the board that I've heard," said a pleased McConnaughay.

On Tuesday, the board will consider a resolution to amend its financial policies to direct distribution of the sales tax money so that82 percent goes to transportation and transit projects; 15 percent goes to public safety projects; and 3 percent goes to a contingency fund, mostly to ensure any bonds leveraged with sales taxes can be paid even in the face of a sales tax dip. The resolution also will stipulate that before the money is used to leverage bonds, any project being considered must be subjected to a cash/benefit analysis.

Two areas may generate further discussion. One is whether to limit expenditures to just capital projects or to also allow payments for some operational costs. And the other is a set-aside of some of the money for municipalities -- to leverage state or federal money, to help joint projects or to provide cash to municipalities incapable of raising it on their own.

"People don't care if the county owns an intersection or the city owns an intersection," said board member Bill Wyatt of Aurora, during one of the discussions. "They just care about getting through it."

He's absolutely right. Taxpayers and drivers want traffic to move, roads to be repaired and bridges to be rebuilt.

They don't want to hear "that's the state's jurisdiction" or "that's the county's problem" or "that's a city street." They want action.

The county wouldn't just be handing over the money to those communities, though.

"The money still will have to go toward improving air quality, public transit or congestion relief," said McConnaughay.

"And this wouldn't start until criteria are established for participation."

All in all, it appears Kane County is poised to get the very biggest bang for its newfound transportation bucks. Given the rush-hour gridlock and the millions of dollars in transportation projects already on the planning board, it can't afford to squander even one of them on less than necessary work, no matter how appealing it might be politically to an individual board member.

"We've got more than enough projects to fill the docket for 10 years," said the board chairman.

Even with the guidelines, McConnaughay knows temptation will still rear its head.

"It's still not foolproof," she said.

"It's human nature that when there's new money on the table, everybody has a Christmas list."

Having some guidelines in place in advance of the money's July arrival, though, does make it more likely those wish lists will have been consolidated, analyzed and prioritized before any of the money is handed out.