The McLean County Board Executive Committee on Monday approved an audit of the county’s 1% mental health and public safety sales tax fund. The full board will consider the resolution at its regular meeting on Thursday.
All members of the committee voted to move the resolution forward, except District 10 member Corey Beirne. Vice Chair Jim Rogal was absent.
The audit will be capped at $50,000 to review the expenditures of the sales tax fund. The committee also considered a resolution to suspend collection of the 1% sales tax for one year, but members opted not to move the the proposal forward.
Revenue from the tax supports mental health initiatives in the county.
Both resolutions were made at the request of the City of Bloomington and Town of Normal, according to county board chair Elizabeth Johnston and County Administrator Cassy Taylor.
Taylor also told the committee a bipartisan group of herself, and three other executive committee members reviewed the resolutions before approving them for the rest of the committee.
Taylor said talks about the resolutions started in January, with city managers Pamela Reece of Normal and Jim Jurgens of Bloomington.
“We had many iterations of amendments that were going back and forth to try and find language that could be acceptable by all three entities,” she said.
Former Behavioral Health Coordination Director Kevin McCall spoke in opposition of suspending the sales tax, calling on members of the committee to do what is right for the county, not what is easy.
“I believe that some government officials may be tempted to reconsider … the agreement not because the policy itself is failing, but because it is politically and financially convenient,” McCall said. “It can be easy to distance oneself from legacy decisions when budgets tighten, especially if the optics favor short-term relief over long-term impacts.”
Also speaking in opposition was former McLean County Board member Susan Schafer, who previously represented District 9 and also chaired the board’s health committee.
“I was an active participant in development and use of the fund while I was on the board, so I’m pretty well versed in the topic,” Schafer said. “I thought we were trying and working towards removing silos, not building them. Is this an attempt to dictate from the grave? I urge you to vote no on these amendments and keep McLean County moving forward.”
Both McCall and Schafer spoke during the public comment period, before the resolutions were voted on.
Taylor said If the sales tax suspension had been ultimately approved by the full board, the county would have seen over $5 million in lost revenue to the mental health fund.
“We would have still expected to manage what we are currently funding with our programming; we would just not have been able to expand that,” she said, adding the county currently is spending more than it is earning in tax revenue. “Eventually, we would have had to reduce those budgetary expenses to what we’re receiving each year.”
Johnston said the original purpose of the intergovernmental agreement from 2016 was to expand services, not reduce them.
“As much as we’d like to expand the services, according to that vision, at this point we also need to be aware to of what do we need to do to prevent any kind of loss of services,” she said. “We’re trying to move forward; we definitely don’t want to [not] be moving forward.”
Other elected officials in McLean County have expressed frustration with the sales tax fund, claiming money was collected but never spent.
Johnston said she doesn't think the resolutions were a reaction to those claims, rather a possible reaction to when the county addressed the issue the first time. In 2024, the county addressed it by restructuring the behavioral health coordinating council.
“We did see the money was sitting and was not being put into the community in the way it was envisioned,” she said. “But I think Ms. Taylor made an excellent point, we have always as a county looked at taxpayer dollars as an expenditure of last resort.”
Johnston said the board looks for state and federal funding and grants before using the fund.
Other members of the executive committee, such as District 8 member Lea Cline, said she was surprised at the resolutions, and did not like the implications of voting against the audit.
“It paints people in a corner when somebody says, 'We want to audit you.' It immediately looks like you’re trying to hide something,” she said. “In that sense, I’m not opposed to paying for an audit. I think it’s a whopping waste of $50,000 that could be spent on actual human beings in our county, but I think you kind [put] yourself into a bad position if you say no to that.”
Cline did vote for the resolution when it was brought to a vote.
In other business, the committee agreed to bring to the full board votes on:
— Removing the language of “massage parlors” from what the county considers as “adult entertainment establishments” and removed a $25 application fee for massage parlor permits.
— Approving a contract with Mejorando Group for assistance with developing a County Board Strategic Plan.
