Madison County officials discuss unfunded state mandates
by Randy Pierce • Unfunded mandates generated by the state legislature, with requirements, regulations, programs and directives that units of government like Madison County must implement and pay for, were cited at a recent meeting of its elected board’s finance and government operations committee where the proposed 2026 fiscal year budget was discussed.
County Board Chairman Chris Slusser praised the various departments affected by those mandates including many created as a result of the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity – Today Act (SAFE-T), which was approved in Springfield in 2021 and the impact is still being felt today.
That legislation, focused on various aspects of the administration and procedures involving local law enforcement, is something, Slusser remarked, “most of us are not a fan of,” referencing its specifics as affecting the county’s sheriff’s department, state’s attorney’s office, probation process, the circuit clerk and court system.
“They’re not happy with it,” Slusser said. “It’s cost us a lot more money, it’s also taken away a lot of revenue sources from us, so we’ve got hit on both ends. We get less revenue and we get a lot more expense and the state’s not providing any or much support to cover those costs.”
He further stated the county clerk has also been subject to unfunded mandates not related to the SAFE-T Act in the form of “forced vote-by-mail applications that we’re required to send out. Those things cost money to print and mail out and we don’t get fully reimbursed for those things.”
Later during the same meeting, Sheriff Jeff Connor shed light on an impact from the SAFE-T Act that he defined as “hidden costs” resulting from training provisions it incorporates for the officers in his department.
Prefacing his comments in this regard by saying the SAFE-T Act “had some good aspects” concerning that training, Connor added, “We need training, no doubt about it.”
Included in this, however, he went on, is what happens when the hours for it are increased as they have been, making it more difficult to manage personnel, “We have 85 sworn officers and when you have mandated training that maybe is five days and you’ve got two years to train every officer for just this one class, that requires five days.”
Such circumstances can occur once or twice a year, he added, so “now the unfunded mandate that you don’t necessarily see right away is the overtime to cover their shifts while they’re gone.”
“They (the state) don’t give you a grant, they don’t give you money to pay for the overtime,” Connor said. “So that is a cost that’s incurred by the county to pay the overtime for the officers to cover the absence.”
Connor further spoke favorably about the implementation of law enforcement officers’ wearing body cameras, remarking he felt this was “fantastic, it’s been great,” creating a lot of positive outcomes but this, too, can lead to costly follow up when a related Freedom of Information Act request comes forth.
The reason is the considerable amount of time that has to be spent by employees who were hired for this purpose, reviewing body camera footage and redacting (or eliminating) those parts of it which could be harmful in some way to the people involved.
“Redaction isn’t taking a magic marker,” Connor explained, “through a line of words. It’s minute-by-minute reviewing of these videos and then going back and blurring the video or maybe listening to the radio traffic to see if a juvenile’s name is being mentioned on the radio during the video. That takes a lot of man hours and there’s a cost to that.”
The state’s SAFE-T Act, which was approved at the legislative level in Springfield and formally implemented September of 2023 with a variety of reforms concerning the law enforcement process, also consists of changes to criminal detention procedures and incorporated a no-cash bail release provision for certain offenders along with other measures including the mandate that officers wear body cameras.
Passed by the Illinois General Assembly in early 2021, in the aftermath of the beating death of George Floyd involving police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the SAFE-T Act was brought forward by three upstate legislators and further includes a major component authorizing judges at the circuit level to determine if certain defendants awaiting trial for criminal offenses should be detained or released pending their hearing dates.
