Typically when newspaper editorial pages take shots at Illinois’ status as the state with the most units of local government, we are criticizing township government as the most duplicative and extraneous layer of governance.

The truth, though, is the hard-to-kill but totally obsolete layer of government that still hangs on in portions of the state is the Township School Treasurer’s Office. You’ve never heard of it, right? Except once in a great while when some persevering, totally fed-up school district decides to fight to the death to get out from under the yoke of the fully politicized, expensive and useless local TTO.

Credit then to Lyons Township High School which has been battling the Lyons Township School Treasurer’s Office for more than a decade. Though a recent legal settlement prohibits the parties from saying what they clearly want to say, these two entities have separated for good.

TTOs were created long ago as a mechanism for small school districts to have an outside body manage their finances. That may have made sense a century ago but no longer. Every school district wants to manage its finances, has the capacity to do it, and saves money in the process. But the TTOs never wanted to let go, so long as they could skim an easy fee off the top and the politically connected — the Lyons’ TTO treasurer is a member of the Getty family — could expand their influence.

Just last week, the TTO wired the high school district the final $1,356,390 it had been hoarding. And that will do it. It’s all over now except for the TTO to pay its pricey lawyers who battled this outcome in every venue possible for so many years.

What a waste TTOs are. What an abuse of public trust. On the community level this is the sort of circumstance that just decimates public trust in local affairs.

Banners with a message

Light-pole banners in Brookfield have evolved into a haphazard mishmash of messaging and design that often has little relevance to the village or any connection to the community.

It happens in well-meaning efforts where a local business group raises the money for a batch of banners. Or the village government approves some banners without much thought to the message they want to communicate to neighbors and visitors.

Now that will start to change as a new banner program will roll out and connect back to Brookfield’s Comprehensive Plan. There will be consistent branding — and likely not the hummingbirds found on the Ogden Avenue banners.

This is a good thing and a sign of a town with a plan where one thing builds upon another and subtler messages of connection and purpose are shared.

We look forward to this new plan gradually taking hold.