Treasurer's Investments Earn Record $275 Million in FY 1990 By JERRY COSENTINO, State Treasurer

At a time when tax increases are on the minds of all taxpayers, it's nice to know that at least one state office is making the most of its tax investments.

For the second year in a row, the Illinois State Treasurer's Office earned yet another record $275 million from investments of Illinois tax funds in fiscal 1990.

The $275 million recorded June 30, the last day of fiscal 1990, breaks last year's investment record of $244. Through the last four years of our current term as treasurer, the office has earned $859 million from its investments of tax funds, the highest four-year mark in Illinois history.

The investments cover a broad-based portfolio, which included short- and long-term bank time deposits, overnight deposits and "specialty" investments such as the treasurer's Linked Deposit Program.

We are proud to have earned yet another record return on the investment of hard-earned tax funds. And we have done it at a time when interest rates are not exceptionally high.

I am supremely proud of the long and hard hours that my staff works to get the return we have gotten. They have helped us earn money that otherwise would have to be made up with higher taxes or cuts in essential services. That fact can never be over-emphasized.

The recently-concluded fiscal year witnessed the start of our latest innovation in investments, the Financing Agricultural Retail Markets for Illinois (FARM Illinois) program.

Through FARM Illinois, our office utilizes a major Illinois bank to identify foreign markets which are interested in purchasing Illinois farm commodities. The response to FARM Illinois has been overwhelming. I hope soon to announce the expansion of the program so that we can aggressively help our agriculture community market its bounty worldwide.

Another good example of using the public's money to help communities was the establishment of a Linked Deposit for the city of Rantoul in Champaign County. I have ordered the deposit of $2 million in that community to be used for low-interest mortgages in the area, which has been devastated by the scheduled closing of the Chanute Air Force Base.

Throughout my two terms as treasurer, I have made it our policy to not only earn the highest possible interest on the tax dollar, but to put it to work in the thousands of communities throughout our great state. When tornadoes recently ripped through east central Illinois, we made low-interest disaster loans available to businesses and homeowners in the 10-county area.

Our philosophy has always been that it is government's role to help those who have exhausted all other means of assistance. In that respect, our Linked Deposit Program's disaster loans have aided hundreds of Illinoisans in their moment of greatest need.

So while it has always been our goal to earn the highest possible interest rate on our investments, we always enter the human equation when factoring benefit. In that regard, I consider the last four years to have been tremendously successful.

And if we look at the bottom line as a fiscal office, the record $859 million earned over the last four years is a bonus. Without prudent and aggressive investment practices, that $859 million would had to have been made up in cuts in state services.

Minus that option, the money would have been made up in — there's that term again — tax increases. For a change, that option was discarded. •

Page 10 / Illinois Municipal Review / August 1990