ROBBING THE POOR BOX.  Illinois tax returns provide taxpayers with an opportunity to make a donation to an approved charity, which either reduces the taxpayer's refund or increases the amount he owes.  That cash is too tempting to legislators.

In a normal year, it takes about six months for the money to make its way to agencies that are supposed to get it.

But the Eastern Illinois Foodbank has yet to receive any money donated with tax forms for 2009 or 2010, said Tracy Smith, executive director of Feeding Illinois. That organization runs a group of food banks that include the Eastern Illinois Foodbank.

If the money is paid back sometime soon, Smith said she can live with that.

"But we would have a real problem if we went around asking our donors to give money to this tax fund and we never saw this money," she said.

Melaney Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Health, which controls funds for seven designated recipients, said the money will eventually make its way to food banks, crisis nurseries and other causes designated by the donors.

"It may not necessarily be tomorrow, but they will be used for those intended purposes," she said.

Why should the charity fund be any different from the employee pension fund, or the so-called Highway Trust Fund and Social Security Trust Fund?

Can anybody argue, with a straight face, that government-managed funds protect individuals against their self-destructive impulses to spend their retirement savings, or their childrens' college funds any more?