THE LANDMARK VIEW
The Brookfield village board met in closed session for about 40 minutes Monday night. While it’s unknown exactly what the conversation was all about – the village is also working on union contract issues – we’re guessing that a good deal of that conversation revolved around Brookfield Zoo and the apparent death of an amusement tax the village approved in December.
While deciding on just how much to raise income taxes on everyone in the state, the Illinois House on Friday passed a bill prohibiting the Village of Brookfield from imposing a tax of its own on Brookfield Zoo.
Brookfield, like many municipalities across the state, is enduring a rough spell. Some of that is of its own making. A good deal of the village’s cash crunch the past two years is directly attributable to the state itself, which has been woefully slow in giving municipalities their share of taxes the state collects. The state has even contemplated reducing the percentage of state tax dollars that goes to municipalities.
And yet the Illinois General Assembly sees fit to prohibit one of those municipalities from seeking a way to derive revenue from its own business base. And let’s be clear. Sure, Brookfield Zoo is a non-for-profit, world-class educational institution. No one denies that.
But it’s also a huge business, with plenty of add-ons – from banquet facilities to restaurants to gift shops – that rake in cash. In 2009, the zoo collected more than $59 million in operating revenue.
The zoo has contended all along that the tax is illegal, unconstitutional. If that’s the case, there was no reason for the state legislature to even consider this bill. Why not let the courts decide it? This decision still leaves a path to litigation anyway.
For the state legislature to involve itself in a local tax dispute is inappropriate, and the votes of local legislators should have reflected that. Instead, Brookfield’s state reps chose to vote “present” while Riverside’s (the zoo is partially within Riverside) voted in favor of the bill.
The ball is in the village’s court at this point. Does it want to spend more money to fight this in court? We’ll find out. In the meantime, the zoo sees this decision as a way to restore the good-old friendship that it previously had with the village.
In truth, the zoo was swatting flies in this fight. It used its PR machine to demonize the village, to improperly tie its own financial issues in 2010 to the village’s proposed tax and to sway state legislators into thinking that this is about affordability. And the zoo got a favorable new 10-year water service deal out of it as well.
The zoo begged state legislators to make sure they could remain an affordable place for families and children to visit and learn. We’re looking forward to those freezes in membership, single-day admission and parking charges as the zoo strives to maintain affordability for visitors from Brookfield – and all across the nation.