What you pay for, the government can take away. This is no revelation, but it certainly hits home when state coffers are wheezing from a struggling economy, lower business profits and the resulting dip in tax receipts. Most states in the Midwest are facing this scenario, and the state of Illinois is not exempt.

To make ends meet, our elected leaders (and a bunch of non-elected bureaucrats) have taken it upon themselves to raise government income (tax increases) and slice government outflow (less spending). It's the only solution to a simple equation that isn't always fair. Just ask smokers who are being required through per-pack tax increases to cover much of the shortfall.

Hopefully, you won't have to pose the same question to yourself and fellow OHV riders.

According to Illinois Governor George Ryan, $1 billion has been cut from state spending from mid-June 2001 through mid-June 2002. Illinois fiscal year begins on July 1, but that doesn't mean the spending reductions are over. A possible victim in further cuts in state spending is Illinois' OHV grant program. The grant program provides up to 100% reimbursement for approved project costs. These can include purchasing land for a public riding park, purchasing equipment to improve an existing public riding park or reclaiming land previously damaged by irresponsible OHV use.

While the program certainly hasn't turned Illinois into the Utah or Arizona of the East in terms of public riding areas, no one expected it to do so. (That title is reserved for West Virginia with its excellent and expansive Hatfield-McCoy trail system.) What Illinois' grant program has done is expand the state's opportunities beyond the pathetic to the acceptable, and with several more years of awards should help the state's trail-riding choices approach in diversity its broad offering of motocross tracks.

While an OHV grant program, even for a state as sorely lacking public riding areas as Illinois, pales in importance relative to education, health care and economic development, the difference is the OHV program is not funded with general tax dollars. The OHV program is funded by an OHV registration fee specifically enacted for the purpose of issuing grants to improve public riding opportunities in the state. If you have purchased a new OHV in the state of Illinois since January 1998, you have paid this fee.

"I have been told that we are still not completely certain how the budget cutbacks will affect our grant programs," says David Sellman, the grant administrator in charge of the OHV program. "For the OHV program, as of now, it looks as though we will have the same amount of funds available for grants this year as we had last year. However, I have been advised that there's a possibility that this may change."

If the program is cut, this fee paid by purchasers of new OHVs becomes just another tax, literally subjecting our sport to the same type of so-called "sin taxes" on smoking, gambling and drinking that long have padded the tax collections of state governments.

Although considerable spending has been cut from Illinois' books, rest assured that there is quite a bit of pork left. You don't want your titling fee going to build some legislator's pet project, do you? I didn't think so.

Now is the time to voice your support for Illinois' OHV program and let the state know you object to any use of OHV registration fees beyond the stated purpose of additional OHV trail funding.

Brenda Potts is the constituency liaison for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, which administers the grants. Please forward your comments regarding the grant program to her at:

Brenda Potts
One Natural Resources Way
Springfield, IL 62702.

Or, you can e-mail her at:

BPOTTS@dnrmail.state.il.us

In addition, contact your state representatives and let them know you support the program and that any votes they make regarding this will be remembered come November. You can find you Illinois state representatives here:

http://www.elections.state.il.us/dls/pages/DLSAddresscrit.asp

Thanks for your help.