Road construction and closures along Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune via Tribune Content Agency)
January 30, 2026 11:27 AM, EST
A Circuit Court judge in Illinois ruled this week that Cook County misspent hundreds of millions of transportation dollars, a win for the trade association representing construction firms statewide.
Judge Alison Conlon ordered Jan. 28 that the county’s use of $243 million in transportation tax revenues during the 2023 fiscal year violated the Safe Roads Amendment to the state constitution. The county unsuccessfully argued it could spend the tax dollars on other expenses tied to enforcing the rules of the road at offices such as the sheriff, state’s attorney, public defender and circuit court clerk.
The Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Alliance, a trade group representing construction, design and maintenance firms, originally filed suit in 2018 opposing that policy. They hoped to bar the county from using tax revenues it expected to collect from gas, parking lots, garages, and car purchases on anything but direct transportation projects. The county’s diversion of those dollars threatened their livelihoods, they argued.
In a Jan. 28 interview, John Fitzgerald, the attorney for IRTBA, declared the order “a total and absolute victory” that “shows the county never even came close to meeting its constitutional obligation to spend these transportation funds” in line with the Safe Roads amendment.
“It is a victory not just for the roadbuilders but for everyone who uses roads, streets and public transit in Cook County,” Fitzgerald said.
Illinois voters overwhelmingly approved the so-called lockbox amendment mandating transportation-related revenues be spent only for transportation-related purposes in 2016. Backers said it was necessary to ensure Illinois governments were building and maintaining road and railway infrastructure. Critics said the language was too vague, potentially exacerbating budget problems by making certain revenues too inflexible.
In an emailed statement, Cara Yi, spokeswoman for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, said the county was “disappointed” with the ruling and had budgeted in good faith.
“The county remains committed to Safe Roads Amendment compliance and utilizing the Transportation Fund to address all expenses allowable under the amendment,” Yi said.
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Even Conlon acknowledged the county’s efforts weren’t “unreasonable, given the relative lack of clarity of the amendment’s application to the county budget.”
Cook County initially argued that as a “home rule” unit of government, it was essentially exempt, but the Supreme Court decided against them in 2022.
After that, the county came up with a methodology to justify spending a percentage of transportation tax dollars at several public safety departments, a process that included sampling how many young people were in the detention center for road violations, the number of state’s attorney investigations related to traffic offenses, and the number of rules of the road cases going through the clerk and courts compared to the offices’ overall caseload.
In court in September, Conlon worried aloud that under that methodology, the county would have to give “under-the-hood” guidance every budget year to ensure it was compliant with the lockbox amendment.
“Whatever the county can get from this court that will instruct us as to what is or is not a direct program expense relating to enforcement of the rules of the road will be extremely helpful,” county attorney David Morrison said then.
To Fitzgerald’s surprise, the judge did not grant that kind of budgetary wiggle room, instead finding every “single penny” IRTBA challenged was ineligible.
“Borrowing from the Appellate Court’s analogy, this Court ‘look(ed) under the hood’ at trial. While some components of the car may be operational, the Court found certain mechanical defects which prevent the car from running,” Judge Conlon wrote.
But Conlon didn’t grant IRTBA a permanent injunction banning future diversions of transportation tax revenue. She said she believed the county when it pledged in court to comply with her ruling.
The county did partially plan for a legal loss in this year’s budget. It took $179 million from its reserves to pay for “public safety expenses that are no longer allowable” under the Safe Roads Amendment. But it set aside another $70 million in transportation dollars for public safety offices anyway in hopes that the judge would agree with their methodology.
Asked what the county would do with that $70 million, Yi said officials were evaluating “next steps.”
“It is important to note that the county has emerged as a regional transportation leader with a focus on equitable transportation investment,” Yi said in her statement, including spending $1.36 billion on multimodal projects; securing hundreds of millions in grant funding for roadway, bike and transit improvements; and helping pass last year’s massive transit reform bill.
Asked whether IRTBA might use this case to go after other cities, counties or villages, CEO Mike Sturino suggested they didn’t need to.
“Everyone we’ve looked at from city of Chicago to townships downstate have been in complete compliance. No one has attempted to thumb their nose the way Cook County has done.”
