County Updates

This post covers recent Board of Review decisions on hospital property tax exemptions, the County Executive in the news on appointments and referendums, and the County's NOAA weather radio station being down and unavailable for possibly months.


Hospital Property Taxes:

In the recent Court decision granting Carle Hospital charitable organization exemptions on disputed property taxes over several past years, there remained a question on a decision whether or not to appeal by the County Board of Review. Previous updates on the ruling available at this Cheat Sheet post from earlier this month. A News-Gazette article previewed the two decisions facing the Board of Review on 2019 exemptions going forward and whether to appeal the decision on previous years:

Nearly a week after a judge found the Carle health system was entitled to charitable property tax exemptions for 2005 to 2011, the Champaign County Board of Review faces a decision about what to do with Carle’s property tax exemption requests for tax year 2019.

In a brief hearing before the board Monday, county Assistant State’s Attorney Joel Fletcher said local taxing authorities haven’t yet determined whether they will appeal the decision on the prior years’ exemptions.

That full article here. OSF Hospital believes that decision will aid their case for exemptions on hospital properties locally as well. They recently urged local governments to consider the recent court rulings as indicative that the law is on their side. More on that in another News-Gazette article here. The Board of Review's decisions were covered in Saturday's News-Gazette:

Champaign County isn’t ready to walk away from a long-standing dispute with the Carle health system over property taxes.

The county and its board of review will appeal the Feb. 5 circuit court decision that restored seven years worth of charitable property-tax exemptions on four of Carle’s Urbana properties, among them Carle Foundation Hospital, according to county Assistant State’s Attorney Joel Fletcher...

In the decision earlier this month, Champaign County Judge Randy Rosenbaum found Carle was entitled to partial charitable exemptions for tax years 2005-2011 on the four Urbana properties...

Based on that ruling, the board of review further voted to recommend to the state Department of Revenue that property tax exemptions sought by both Carle and OSF Heart of Mary Medical Center properties for tax year 2019 be approved, Fletcher said. Most of those properties are in Urbana.

That full article here with additional information on other specific items.


County Executive:

Yesterday the News-Gazette highlighted the ongoing appointment dispute between the Champaign County Executive Darlene Kloeppel and the County Board Chairman Giraldo Rosales. Both appear to believe that under the new Executive Form of Government that they are the presiding officer who should be making appointment decisions for County office vacancies, such as that of the County Treasurer's replacement. The State's Attorney, Julia Rietz, agreed with the County Board Chairman that in that case, State law gives him appointment authority. Kloeppel still disagrees and may be looking for additional information and guidance from outside the County:

Kloeppel said she disagrees with Rietz’s opinion on this issue, and she’s consulted her own attorney.

The legal question is whether the county executive’s authority is limited to exactly what’s specified in the county executive statute, or whether the split between executive and legislative functions under the county executive form of government supersedes other references throughout state statutes to certain functions of a county board chairman as the chief elected officer of a county, she said.

Kloeppel said she’s prepared to take the issue of appointment-making authority to court, if necessary. For now, she’s waiting to see what Attorney General Kwame Raoul has to say in response to a request for an opinion on county executive powers and duties from Will County, which also has an elected county executive.

More at that full article at the News-Gazette's eEdition here (subscription). The article points out that Kloeppel, given the urgency of filling the position, is not interfering with the appointment of the replacement Treasurer while looking for a more definitive answer on the question for the future.


The County Executive also had more information about how County government works in her ongoing guest commentary series in the News-Gazette. Last week she discussed County referendums, their requirements, limits, and other details. One relevant issue with some of the County Board primary races is changing government structure or funding services. Excerpt:

Referendums can also address the way the local government operates in ways that state law allows. In Champaign County, the county recorder, auditor and coroner are currently elected instead of appointed, and in 2016, creation of the office of the county executive created a three-branch government for checks and balances. Others can change the board structure, such as determining the number of elected board members, electing board members by district or at large, and establishing term limits. These types of referendums are usually for political reasons, although sometimes cost effectiveness or process efficiencies can be a factor as well.

Referendums also can raise funds for the addition of services or discontinue these services.

For example, in Champaign County, the mental-health board and the board for the care and treatment of persons with developmental disabilities were created by referendums that committing additional property-tax revenue for these special purposes. In 2020, the mental-health board will have revenue of $5.74 million ($28.58 per capita) and the developmental-disabilities board is budgeted at $4.37 million ($21.75 per capita) with which to fund local services. You can check out their activities at co.champaign.il.us/mhbddb/mhbddb.php.

Full article with all sorts of helpful information here.


NOAA Weather Radio:

From the weather service website:

NOAA Weather Radio station WXJ-76 in Champaign, serving east central Illinois on a frequency of 162.550 MHz, will be out of service for an extended period of time, effective immediately.

This outage is due to a damaged coaxial cable, which connects the radio transmitter to the antenna. In addition, a new tower location must be secured to prevent future damage to cabling, which could result in additional future long-term outages. The station will remain offline as the National Weather Service works to relocate the weather radio transmitter to a new tower...

While the entire process could take up to six months, we are working to get the NOAA Weather Radio broadcast online as soon as possible.

Several nearby NOAA Weather Radio transmitters also serve portions of the WXJ-76 listening area. None of these cover Champaign County (fringes of the county may receive a signal at times, but not reliable enough to use warning alarm tones). 

More information at the weather service website here. WCCU's coverage had a concise list of alternate frequencies and geographic coverage descriptions for neighboring counties here.