$3 million Lake government budget crisis is averted

CROWN POINT | A $3 million shortfall in property taxes that was threatening the Lake County government budget only seven weeks ago has vanished thanks to a recovering economy.

"Revenues from auto excise taxes have come in big recently. That and other miscellaneous revenue has offset and solved that problem," Dante Rondelli, the council's finance director, said this week.

Excise tax is the annual charge on the value of automobiles, motorcycles and light trucks the state collects from motorists buying new vehicles or renewing their license plates. It is distributed to local government units based on the same formula governing local property taxes.

That averts a crisis that only recently had county officials thinking about the possibility of spending cuts because of lower-than-normal property tax collections as an aftermath of a recession. Economic woes have boosted unemployment and mortgage foreclosures, leaving many property owners unable to pay their tax bills.

Property taxes also have been shrinking as the result of a state-mandated freeze on increases in the overall county property tax levy and caps on the highest amount the county can tax individual property owners.