It’s more than just Daley
Friday, Jan 5, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller
Mayor Daley’s announcement on school funding was about something bigger than just him, or his relationship with Sen. James Meeks. The Metropolitan Mayors Caucus is also now on record favoring “comprehensive school funding reform.” Suburban legislators usually listen closely to their mayors, who have quite a lot of local power. The group of 272 mayors plans to release a report in February.
Elgin mayor Ed Schock wants the state to boost per-student spending across rich and poor districts.
He said in the past, Springfield worried the money would be wasted.
“They did not address fiscal and academic accountability,” he said. “The mayors’ caucus intends to raise the level of discussion and accountability to ensure it’s included in any discussion of funding reform in the General Assembly’s Spring 2007 session.”
Caucus members hope higher income or sales taxes will let local governments lower property taxes.
Regional mayors insist they’d be open to finding other revenue, including the sale or lease of Illinois tollways.
Back to Daley for a bit.
Mayor Richard M. Daley challenged state lawmakers Thursday to reform Illinois’ education funding system to take the burden off property taxpayers and reduce inequities between rich and poor districts.
“This is the year,” Daley said at Prosser Career Academy, a public high school on the city’s near northwest side. “We don’t need a new study. I don’t need somebody telling me all about education. Basically, we need funding. You need money. It’s as simple as that.”
And Republican state Rep. Roger Eddy was more open about a tax increase yesterday than I think he has been before.
State Rep. Roger Eddy, R-Hutsonville, who also is a school superintendent, said reform that raises taxes may face opposition from Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who has his own plan for selling or leasing the state lottery to raise money for schools.
“If the mayor is looking for a place to start, the biggest obstacle is the governor’s office,” Eddy said. “The mayor’s absolutely right, though. The over-reliance on property taxes is an antiquated system. … If it takes an income tax increase, it takes an income tax increase.”
Rev. Sen. Meeks hinted yesterday that the governor has a fall-back plan.
“The lottery plan is the plan the governor publicly espoused. The governor shared with me privately several other plans and options he had if the lottery did not work….He has other areas he’s looked at — other things that might or could be sold or leased that he’s asked me publicly not to share,†Meeks said.
Meeks winked when asked whether Plan B might involve leasing the Tollway. But Deputy Gov. Sheila Nix declared the tollway “off the table.†[…]
Daley, who turned the Chicago Skyway into a $1.83 billion gravy train for city programs, said “everything should be on the table.†He specifically mentioned the tax swap, privatizing the lottery or Tollway or a land-based, taxpayer-owned Chicago casino.
And what about the new kissy-kiss friendliness between Daley and Meeks?
“This is a meeting about school funding. I don’t want us to politicize the mayor’s gathering today. If I make a statement like that, the headline might be something different from that,” Meeks said.
“When I do that, I want to have a separate press conference so I can get you [media] guys back again. If I say it now, you guys wouldn’t have to come.”
And added…
Asked if he would endorse Dorothy Brown, Meeks said: “I probably won’t be endorsing anybody who’s going to lose.”
What was that old saying about good government and good politics?
Meanwhile, Doc Walls continued his attempt to toss Daley off the ballot. It doesn’t look too promising.
- Anon - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 5:49 am:
I wonder whether the ed reform momentum will include a lifting of the cap on charters and/or an introduction of vouchers. Let’s see if Illinois’ Republicans have anything meaningful to contribute to this funding reform movement.
- Cassandra - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 8:28 am:
Well, we know that da Mare would be for a tax swap. It’s a way of getting money out of suburbanites and into the corruption-plagued and badly run Chicago public school system, where legions of barely literate, undereducated teachers with tensure make really nice salaries and principals and administrators make salaries nicely into the six figures.
Suburban schools would see a de facto decrease in school funding and would have to raise their just-lowered property tax swapped taxes again to cover their school costs, but Daley doesn’t care about that. And downstaters could continue to devote a rather tiny proportion of their property taxes to schools, courtesty, again, of Chicago’s supposedly well off suburbs. Despite the fact that many suburbanites sacrificed greatly to buy a house in a suburb where the schools are at least decent and are hardly well off.
Maybe Ed Schock has the right idea. Instead of this sustained effort to squeeze cash out of the suburbs, why not give a sustained amount of additional funding to all districts, rich and poor. It’s clear, by the way, that this could be done without a tax increase even if property tax relief were to be minimal. The state has tons of our money, it’s just a matter of getting the current pigs at the trough to give the money back to us instead of merely enriching themselves.
The overall theme should be, in a world of escalating costs and overstaffed and underperforming government, the total tax burden at the least should not go up. We aren’t getting our money’s worth now.
- Dollar USA - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 8:30 am:
Mayor Daley has it wrong again. It is not all about funding. Catholic school children do better than public school children with fewer dollars per student.
- Anonymous - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 8:47 am:
Someone should ask Daley if his Governor is not the prime roadblock to the kind of funding reform Daley wants. With Democrats dominating both Houses of the G.A., it’s hard to put the blame anywhere else.
- North of I-80 - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 8:49 am:
Some of us have been waiting for 30+ years for education to be reformed, not the funding of it. Most Catholic, Lutheran and Fundamentalist non-denominational private schools have been doing it “right” for all these years for a fraction of what public schools do. I suggest you spend some days sitting in on high school classes (be a substitute teacher for a semester) to see what the public schools are passing on. Read what public school kids write, study the work ethic and learn the priorities of public school kids today. Then do the same in private schools and see if the difference is in $$ spent per student, teacher salaries or something else.
After reading just a few papers, you might rethink giving any more taxpayer $$ to the public schools to reward such work.
- Ali Bin Haddin - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 9:52 am:
At the risk of being redundant, I suggest out sourceing education to India. Flying students to the sub-continent would be cheaper in the long run and provide better results. Parents could receive a voucher for plane tickets to make a visit at Christmas and one other holiday.
- Squideshi - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 10:24 am:
I’m not impressed by Meeks. He had the opportunity to support a gubernatorial candidate in 2006 that actually championed HB750, and he failed to do so. Seeing as he’s only willing to support candidates whom he thinks will win, he’s just going to continue to reinforce and support the status quo.
- Anon - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 11:58 am:
Since everything is still “on the table”, shouldn’t the Gov take a hard look at whether Illinois hundreds of independent school districts should be consolidated to achieve some savings? For all the Chicago Public School’s bashers out there, wake up and look at how many superintendants and administrators are out there making way, way more than CPS admin for managing 2 schools, or 5 schools, here and there.
Gov. Blago’s puff legislation about “making it easier for school districts to voluntarily consolidate” must be a total failure (otherwise he would have had a press conference by now). How many suburban and rural Illinois school districts have chosen or will choose to voluntarily consolidate? That’s like asking my 5 yr. old son to voluntarily go to bed early.
- Tom - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 12:45 pm:
James Meeks has also announced his support for the New York Yankees, New England Patriots, and San Antonio Spurs.
- Bill - Friday, Jan 5, 07 @ 5:58 pm:
Cassie,
Ill ignore your despicable insult of the hard-working, well qualified, relatively underpaid teachers in Chicago. My question to many of your posts is, Where do you think that many of the residents of the suburbs that you are so concerned about work and earn their upper middle class salaries? Right you are! Chicago! Maybe the city should charge suburbanites a toll to get in and out of the city so that you couldn’t take their dollars out to spend in your communities.
If Chicago were to disappear, Oak Park would be Dayton, Ohio.