A task force report from the Illinois Lieutenant Governor’s Office could spark renewed interest in the merger of River Forest village and township governments.
The study, which focuses on local government consolidation and unfunded mandates, recommends that coterminous cities/townships, such as River Forest, should merge to reduce the size and cost of government. Eighteen such relationships exist in Illinois, including Oak Park.
For a merger to take place, two distinct paths were recommended; both would have to start at the local level.
One would start with the adoption of an advisory referendum. From there legislation would have to be adopted by the General Assembly. Then a binding referendum would have to be approved by the voters.
This course took place Evanston, the first coterminous township and municipality to consolidate. More than two-thirds of the voters in the March 2012 primary supported the pursuit of dissolution. Legislation allowing that to take place was adopted in the General Assembly in 2013. On March 18, 2014, nearly two-thirds of the voters elected to abolish Evanston Township. An evaluation of the impact of the merger will be released in early February, said Martha Logan, Evanston’s community engagement manager.Â
The second avenue would be if the village and township agreed to consolidate. A bill would then have to be approved by the General Assembly. From there both parties would adopt resolutions and merger would take place after a specified period of time. That course took place last year in Belleville; a resolution to that effect is being tweaked by the township board, said Dallas Cook, who serves as both Belleville City and township clerk. Cook proposed the merger. Belleville Township will no longer exist as of May 1, 2017.
The merger issue for River Forest arose two years ago when State Rep. Emanuel “Chris “Welch (D-7th), who represents River Forest, sponsored HB4425. To merge both units of government, the bill would have to be approved in the General Assembly and voters then would have to decide whether to consolidate. The bill never made it out of committee, and an advisory question on the same matter never made it to the November ballot.