Background
Illinois primarily funds preservation efforts through two state progams: the Natural Areas Acquisition Fund (NAAF) and the Open Spaces Land Acquisition and Development Fund (OSLAD), which help communities build parks and playgrounds and provide habitat for the state’s most vulnerable endangered species.Created in 1989, the NAAF provides for land acquisition and stewardship projects to preserve habitat for the state’s most vulnerable endangered species. As of 2007, NAAF projects included acquisition of over 21,700 acres of woods, prairies, and wetlands and exotic species control, hydrological restoration in streams and wetlands, and controlled prairie burns. OSLAD, meanwhile, provides matching grant funds to local governments for up to 50 percent of the cost of projects that create outdoor opportunities. Since its 1986 inception, OSLAD has matched over $194 million for more than 800 local open space and recreation projects, including neighborhood parks and forest preserves.
Although these programs have a dedicated funding source in the Real Estate Transfer Tax, Illinois consistently diverts those funds--typically allocating less than half of earmarked revenue toward open space acquisition. NAAF and OSLAD are supposed to receive half of all revenues from the state real estate transfer tax, with the other half going to affordable housing programs. But legislators have raided and not fully allocated these funds during budget crises. In 2003, for example, NAAF and OSLAD received just 25 percent of the receipts from the real estate sales tax, or half of the originally intended amount.
For the first time in recent memory, this session was different. Although early draft budgets would have again under-funded these program, Environment Illinois teamed up with a coalition of over thirty other public interest organization and successfully pushed for full-funding of OSLAD and NAFF.
Althought advocates won full funding for NAAF/OSLAD ($15 million and $34 million, respectively) in 2007, the funding raids will have a prolonged impact, since the state has missed critical opportunities to protect vulnerable open spaces and provide recreational opportunities to residents. Across Illinois, lands that had provided homes for rare plant and animal species have been cleared for residential and commercial development, in part due to the lack of state funding for preservation.