Column: Administration should not mess with Lake County's federal funding

Chicago Tribune

12-03-2025

Now that more and more of us have determined the federal government is our enemy, it looks like area communities that had hoped for some grant money may be disappointed. Once, Uncle Sam was their partner.
No longer, as President Donald Trump and his merry band of Muskians are ready to sack and pillage the federal government like Visigoths at the gates of Rome. While there may be fiscal waste at all levels of our governments, we forget the aid provided and what the influx of funding from Washington, D.C., can bestow.
About this time last year, U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Highland Park, submitted a number of worthy proposals for community project funding for towns in the three counties — Lake, Cook and McHenry — he represents in Congress. They were seeking federal funding totaling $55.7 million.
The monetary nominations still haven't received funding. Depending on what the Senate does by March 14 on a continuing resolution to extend keeping the federal government running at current funding levels through Sept. 30, the money may never surface.
One of the Lake County proposals included $580,694 for downtown Antioch improvements. Another was $240,000 to upgrade mobile data terminals in Round Lake Beach Police Department patrol squads. North Chicago police sought a similar grant totaling $446,620.
Gurnee asked for $5 million to design and build a pedestrian path along Fuller Road, from Route 132 to Stearns School Road. Highland Park wanted $4.3 million to update its water treatment plant.
Other infrastructure requests in the county included $3.5 million for removing lead water pipes in North Chicago; $3.5 million for upgrading the Northwest Regional Water Reclamation Facility in Fox Lake; $13 million toward flood mitigation in Lake Bluff; and $1.3 million for ecological restoration of 250 acres at Gander Mountain Forest Preserve off Wilmot Road. One of the most interesting proposals came from the College of Lake County to build an urban farm center in downtown Waukegan at a cost of $6.13 million.
Gurnee Park District officials are expected to apply soon for $600,000 in federal funding under an open space grant program. The money will be used to revitalize Viking Park on Old Grand Avenue.
That is if there are going to be any federal grants available anytime soon. Lake Countians pay taxes just like others across the nation, and they deserve their fair share. Since 2021, more than $50 million in federal funds have found their way into the 10th Congressional District through Schneider's efforts.
In the long run, these 'pork projects' make lives better. They create good-paying jobs and benefit communities in numerous ways.
These community-related projects aren't haphazard requests for federal largesse. They need support to come to fruition, which public works jobs have over the decades, making the quality of life better for Lake Countians.
Somebody has to approve and oversee these projects at the federal level. Those people are part of the national workforce, which is rapidly being drained.
Yet there are those who contend these communitywide projects, like historical federal safety-net programs — so-called 'entitlements' like Social Security, Medicare and food stamps — are ripe with trillions of dollars in fraud and waste. Those vast amounts have yet to be proven. If so, those millions of violators should be prosecuted, and soon.
One of the 'entitlements' many may recall were those $1,200 stimulus checks handed out in 2020 to couples earning less than $150,000, and paycheck protection business loans during the coronavirus pandemic. As the fifth anniversary of COVID-19 invading the U.S. is this month, I don't remember anybody refusing those federal gifts.
In his joint address to Congress last week, President Trump railed at the 'appalling waste' of tax dollars within federal agencies. The administration has been canceling grants and federal contracts; and ending real estate leases, a number in Illinois.
One 'entitled' agency, Social Security, which Americans and their employers have paid into during their working lives, plans to cut its workforce by 7,000 to 50,000 employees. Seeking to slash $800 million from its budget, the SSA has closed local offices, including one in Rockford.
Meanwhile, stock indexes, whose components comprise many 401(k)s and retirement nest eggs, continued to sink earlier this week amid trade war fears with our former nice-guy allies, like Canada. With the administration in office for less than 90 days, many economists are predicting a 'Trumpcession,' or at the least a return to the 1970s and 'stagflation' — slow growth and rising prices — as markets are whipsawed when the president proclaims tariffs on nations on one day and then changes his mind the next.
It's hard for businesses and local governments to plan for the future without clear and prudent signals from Washington. One way for that to happen is the return to federal monetary support of local infrastructure proposals.