The Illinois government system continued its decline into the scummy swamp of pay-to-play corruption as the Illinois Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal on the landfill expansion plans adjacent to Cortland Elementary School.
According to Stop The Mega-Dump attorney George Mueller: “The result [of the court’s decision] from my perspective is that those of us who practice in this area are now stuck with Pollution Control Board and appellate [court] precedents that are very bad law.”
Certainly bad for those residents and school children closest to Ground Zero of a landfill expansion. But not necessarily so for those who receive revenue from the landfill siting process in Illinois.
The profit revenue stream from a 30-year agreement for a 2,000 daily tons of garbage megadump is impressive even for a corporation as large as the 203-ranking that Waste Management, Inc., received in Forbes’ Fortune 500 in 2012. The revenue stream from the tipping fees was certainly enticing to the DeKalb County Board and Administration.
A tipping fee is the charge levied upon a given quantity of waste received at a waste processing facility. In the case of a landfill it was originally designed to offset the government’s cost of opening, monitoring and eventually closing the site. In Illinois that purpose morphed into a system that allows good people to be enticed during host fee agreement negotiations with much needed funding for worthy public projects IF they approve a siting expansion application and then be bound by an ex-parte communications gag order from discussing the matter with their constituents until after they voted on the application.
For a small group of attorneys, consultants and professional expert witnesses that practice in the area of landfills the revenue stream generated provides for a comfortable standard of living, too.
The Illinois Supreme Court’s decision ends the direct appeal process for the citizen group Stop The Mega-Dump. A case could be made for a federal lawsuit but that would be an expensive case.
But an organization of Cortland Township Electors has formed under the leadership of Frankie Benson and Richard Hahin to exhaust every option possible to enforce their rights as electors under the Illinois Township Code to deny the landfill expansion. There is a clear conflict in the Illinois Compiled Statutes between what is referred to as Rule 39.2 of the Illinois Environmental Protection Act and the Illinois Township Code. Citizens of Cortland Township followed the rules as outlined in the code. Being that they have to live and send their children to school at pretty much Ground Zero of the Chicagoland megadump it’s really rather easy to understand why they want the Illinois courts to settle the conflict. Few wouldn’t if placed in their situation.
Benson has set a deadline of June 21 to collect pledges and raise more donations to hire an attorney to represent them. Jeff Jeep from the Jeep & Blazer law firm attended several meetings and offered to take the case for $60,000. The Cortland Township Electors Association has generated about $20,000 in pledges to date and many potential donors were holding off to see whether funds would be needed for a STMD case in front of the Illinois Supreme Court. Money is tight these days for folks on the outside of Illinois’ pay to play government system.
How to help…
Please send contributions.The Cortland Township Electors Association is asking that you sit down and write a check today. If you would like to donate anonymously, please call Frankie Benson at 815-766-0667 or send her an email. Be sure you have contact information, such as name and address or at least a phone number on your check or money order. Upon receipt of your check and legible mailing information, she will send you a receipt with signed promise to return your contribution if for any reason they do not get this case into court.
Make your check out to:
Cortland Township Electors Association
18711 Chase Rd.
DeKalb, IL 60115
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2 Comments
http://www.daily-chronicle.com/2013/05/31/olson-court-fight-was-driven-by-principles/ah6rb08/?page=2
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In the short term, I think the opponents of the mega-dump are on the right track, and it would be appropriate to hear the court’s point of view regarding the Illinois Municipal Code for garbage. It might make more sense to ask the court in this case the purpose of the code, as opposed to asking for an interpretation, per se. In other words, why does this code even exist if it does not apply and has no purpose.
It has been falsely claimed that this code is “township code”, and somehow overruled by state code, when in fact it is Illinois State code FOR townships, to be clear. Let us hope the rule-of-law still supersedes the rule-of-greedy-men in this case.
Regardless of the outcome of this case, the problem in the long-term is that this code can be changed to suit the needs of those who are proponents of the landfill expansion. It would make more sense to buy out Waste Management through mutual agreement or eminent domain and establish the landfill as a non-profit public utility. There is no reason why Dekalb County residents should be paying for outrageous corporate salaries and stockholder dividends when the County can run the landfill “at cost” as a public utility.
As a side note, there is no reason why the Dekalb water utility should be “privatized”, as has been rumored, only to have our water utility run by a private for-profit company. Likewise, there is no reason why the issue of debt should be privatized either, which brings us to our next topic. At the risk of repeating myself, here is a link to an article that gives a brief explanation on how to establish a locally-run public bank.
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/publicly-owned.php
In summary, Dekalb County can buy out the financial interest of Waste Management with a public bank loan, and have the loan be payed off through user fees for garbage collection. It would be preferable to have a print & spend debt-free currency under a constitutional form of government, but even the convoluted tax & borrow & spend monetary system we have today can be applied in this case.