Well, there’s a lot. If you haven’t lived here in Illinois, and I don’t think you have, then you may not pay attention to the fact that we had decades of financial mismanagement in the state. Decades of challenge with the pensions, with school funding and so on. And it’s had real lasting impact, negative impact on the state.
And so, for over the last six years, we’ve been steadily dealing with that. It’s been good. I mean, we’ve balanced the budget, and we’ve paid a lot of debt down, more than $11 billion at this point of debt. We’ve reduced the impact of the pension liability for people. And so, you know, those are just a few things I’m mentioning…
And to be clear, these are not things that, I mean probably, when I’m done, even if you said Pritzker serves a third term, right, you still have a lot of work to do. And just one thing to put in everybody’s mind, that the school funding issue is a massive issue, because people talk about the high property taxes in the state of Illinois, which is a huge problem, right? We can manage everything else but high property taxes, it’s a local issue, but it’s a schools issue. 70 percent of your property tax bill that comes in the mail is your local schools. And if we’re under-funding, and we are, at the state level, we can only afford what we can afford. Then it’s got to be made up for at the property tax level, at the local level.
Now I’ve gone, we’ve taken this from 24 percent of school funding, which is about half of the rest of the country. The average in the United States of funding from the state for education is about 48percent, 46, seven, 8 percent right? We were at 24 percent state funding. You’ve got to make up for that with property taxes.
So how do you fix that? The state’s got to get in the business of funding education better. We’re now up in the mid-high 30s, and that’s good, but we’re not even average in the United States, right? And you got to get all the locals to stop raising property taxes while you’re funding them, right? Because everybody wants more and more and more money. But at some point, you’ve got to start bringing down the pressure on the upward trajectory of property taxes.
So I’m just giving you an example of a long-term issue. We’re dealing with it, but it isn’t going to be fixed tomorrow or next year. It’s going to take us, like persistence. We’ve got to go after this every single year.
- Techie - Wednesday, Aug 21, 24 @ 7:48 am:
“even if you said Pritzker serves a third term”
That makes a third term sound like an unlikely event, as if he is interested in something else after his second term.
- Juice - Wednesday, Aug 21, 24 @ 8:33 am:
If the state is going to do anything on stopping the upward pressure on property taxes, the first place to state is reforming PTELL. The current law essentially punishing districts if they don’t increase their levy on an annual basis in future years.
- JB13 - Wednesday, Aug 21, 24 @ 8:55 am:
–Because everybody wants more and more and more money–
No lie detected there. It’s exactly why so many of the people of this state don’t want to give massive new taxing abilities to Springfield in the name of funding education. Because we know that the teachers unions will simply take that money and then insist this was only an “important first step on the road” or some similar claptrap, and then continue to raise property taxes.
And of course there is always the real possibility that lawmakers simply redirect the money that was for “education” to other causes, and then turn around and raise taxes again, once more in the name of “education.”
As the governor’s public falling out with the CTU shows, the problem is on his side of the divide, not the other way around.
- Don't lose Sight - Wednesday, Aug 21, 24 @ 9:12 am:
Balancing Illinois Budgets going forward based on current Legislative Spending trajectory, Increased Pension Pressures, Government Union Contract demands with Federal Covid $$ gone is going to be impossible without major tax increases.
Taxing services next year will be the start.