Legislative Priorities
At the Jan. 16, 2024, City Council meeting, the Council approved these 2024 Legislative Priorities. Naperville’s priorities fall under four general categories: Finance, Governance and Technology, Transportation and Public Safety. The factors influencing these priorities include identifying operational challenges, risk mitigation and opportunities to decrease costs, increase revenues, or increase efficiency.
Finance
- Sustainable Public Pensions
- Protect public pension systems and the taxpayers that fund them.
- The costs of any proposed changes must be clearly understood and considered.
- Any changes should be directly linked to solving a pension problem.
- Restore the Local Governmental Distributive Fund (LGDF) to 10%
- The current local government share is 6.47% of individual income tax collections and 6.845% of corporate income tax collections. Restoring the LGDF to the original rate of 10% reduces stress on property taxes and supports funding of critical City services including public safety, public works, and technology.
Governance & Technology
- Open Meetings Act/Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
- Permit meetings to be held remotely at the discretion of local officials.
- Address burdensome FOIA requests for police body camera footage of arrests
- Support electronic publication of statutorily mandated postings
- Fulfill any statutorily mandated newspaper posting requirement by providing notice on the City’s website and an online searchable database independent from the municipality.
- Support municipal immunity from liability for cyberattacks
- Remove the liability of municipalities when a cyberattack occurs and ensure critical local services are protected.
Transportation
- Erosion of Motor Fuel Tax (MFT) dollars
- At 27 electric vehicles per 1,000 residents, Naperville has four times the state and national average number of electric vehicles.
- With this increase in electric vehicles, state and local MFT dollars continue to diminish and replacement revenues are necessary to fund roadway maintenance.
- Future regional public transportation planning, funding, and service
- Affordable and convenient public transportation is critical to the community.
- The RTA highlights funding, governance, and planning challenges of sustaining the current public transportation network.
Public Safety
- Increasing the penalty for fleeing and eluding from a misdemeanor to a felony
- The Police Department has experienced a continued increase in fleeing and eluding cases from 28 in 2019 to 137 in 2022.