From the Tribune:

Hundreds of school districts across the state and dozens in the Chicago region have dramatically increased special taxes for legal claims and insurance expenses over the last five years, a recent study shows, but not necessarily because legal troubles have mounted.

The obscure tax, which doesn’t show up on homeowners’ bills, in some districts has paid for portions of salaries for teachers, administrators, secretaries, custodians and cafeteria workers, a Tribune review of court records and district financial reports shows. […]

Statewide, 220 districts–nearly a fourth of the state’s school districts–have increased their tax levies for tort immunity expenses by 100 percent or more between 1998 and 2003, according to a recent study by the Illinois Business RoundTable, a Chicago business organization.

Of those, 48 are in the six-county Chicago region.

A Tribune analysis of 2003-2004 financial reports of the Chicago-area districts showed that nearly every district moved the tort money into its main education operating account for teacher and administrator salaries, pumping up reserves and, in some cases, avoiding deficits.

Attorney Robert Slattery is quoted extensively in the piece. Slattery’s crusade against misuse of the tort tax goes back to at least 2001, when he filed suit against Highland Community College, according to the Freeport Journal-Standard.

Richard and Delores Woessner of Pearl City, two of Slattery’s clients, attended the brief hearing Monday. Woessner was part of an unsuccessful attempt to challenge the Pearl City school district’s use of tort funds several years ago.

“We started it and we lost,” Richard Woessner said Monday, adding that the issue is important to him because, he said, “it’s illegal (for boards) to bypass a referendum, to raise taxes without having voters voting on it.”