* In a rather unusual and pretty darned humorous twist, anti-tax state Rep. Jeannie Ives (R-Wheaton) has filed the requisite paperwork to be the House sponsor of Senate Bill 9.
SB 9 is the bill the Senate Democrats passed today which raises income taxes and expands the sales tax to services.
Rep. Ives told me she believes the bill “needs work.”
From a Senate Democratic operative…
So Jeanne Ives is the sponsor of a tax hike? Maybe we did coordinate this with Madigan.
Heh.
…Adding… From the Illinois Policy Institute’s news service…
“I prefiled for the bill so I could control it in the House,” Ives told Illinois News Network. “I think that there’s a bigger conversation that needs to be had before we do a tax increase. … I thought the best way to have a voice in that discussion would be to control the bill in the House.”
Ives acknowledged that there are procedural ways for Democrats to take the bill away from her, but she hopes that doesn’t happen.
“There are a lot of tax increases in here that we shouldn’t even be having a conversation about until we’ve talked about cutting spending and doing more for the business community rather than making them the highest taxes in the United States,” she said.
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* The Senate has approved SB 9, which is the tax hike and revenue bill. The bill received 32 votes - all Democrats. Follow along with our live coverage post by clicking here.
…Adding… SB 6, which is the omnibus appropriations bill, has passed with 33 votes and no debate.
*** UPDATE 1 *** ILGOP…
“Senate Democrats’ decision to ram through multiple tax hikes outside a comprehensive jobs and reform package confirms that the entire Democratic Party’s position is to raise taxes while protecting the status quo. First Mike Madigan made clear real reform is not an option, then Democratic candidates for governor began campaigning on raising taxes without reform, and now the Senate Democrats are falling in line. The Democrats moved forward an agenda today that raises income taxes, expands the sales tax and ensures property taxes keep rising.” – Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Steven Yaffe
In 2015, Mike Madigan stated his desire to raise the income tax to 5 percent without reform.
In 2016, Democrats refused to even send Gov. Rauner a balanced budget or pass reforms that voters from both sides support.
And in 2017, Democratic candidates for Governor latched onto the Madigan position – tax hikes without reform.
The News-Gazette notes, J.B. Pritzker “supports a substantial increase in the state income taxes… Pritzker recently told a group of party members that the state income tax should be increased to at least 5 percent, perhaps higher.”
Pritzker now says he opposes a property tax freeze.
Chris Kennedy called reforms to fix Illinois “Bullsh#t” and “stood with Speaker Madigan” against a balanced budget with spending caps and reform.
Daniel Biss, who ran Mike Madigan’s Super PAC, even said he’s open to the idea of taxing retirement income.
And Ameya Pawar believes that “most people will tell you they’re willing to pay more taxes.”
Democratic candidates for Governor support tax hikes without reform. Now, the Senate is following suit.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Press release…
Speaker Michael J. Madigan issued the following statement Tuesday regarding budget bills passed by the Senate:
“The appropriations measures passed by the Senate will be thoughtfully considered by the House Democratic Budget Working Group headed by Representative Greg Harris. Since the beginning of the session, a working group made up of Representatives Harris, Carol Ammons, Kelly Burke, Kelly Cassidy, Fred Crespo, Will Davis, Robyn Gabel, Will Guzzardi, Lisa Hernandez, Elaine Nekritz, Elgie Sims and Michael Zalewski has worked diligently on state budget issues, including passage of a Lifeline Budget. They will thoroughly review the Senate’s proposal and consider it as part of our efforts to pass a full-year balanced budget that will end the budget impasse.”
…Adding… Rauner…
*** UPDATE 3 *** SGOP Leader Christine Radogno…
My Caucus and I cannot support the Senate Democrats’ budget and revenue package in its current form.
I truly wish we would have been able to come together on a comprehensive solution to the state’s challenges. My biggest concern has always been for the state and its people. I want to avoid further downgrades and fiscal meltdown. I want to help put Illinois on a path to stability.
We need a balanced budget. We need property tax relief. We need significant reforms to reach our goals.
If this package moves to the House, I hope they can approach it in a bipartisan manner and make further progress in all those areas.”
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The least of the House’s problems
Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* WCIA TV this morning…
Since most eyes are on the Senate while waiting for a budget solution, not much is being heard from the House. One reason could be because not much is happening.
The House has spent little more than five hours in session during all of May. Monday, the day’s session began around 3:30 and the House adjourned about 4 pm, to head off to committees. It’s the unfortunate time card Representatives are clocking in this month.
The House took a week off this month and attacking that break is completely fair game because it’s almost unheard of and was really a foolish idea considering the times we’re in. That break didn’t make it into the story, however.
Anyway, because of that unusual recess, the House faced a narrow two-week deadline to deal with Senate bills in committee, which ended last week. Click here to see the 21-page list of bills the Senate sent to the House.
* Also, that WCIA piece was not an original story. The Illinois Policy Institute published this last Friday…
Illinois state lawmakers are taking paychecks despite not passing a budget for nearly 700 days. One might assume they’d be working around the clock to earn them.
But Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan has called the House into session for less than six hours in the entire month of May.
At least the author mentioned the committee angle…
While the full House has been in session for less than a single workday in May, members have been holding committee meetings throughout the month.
But I’m not sure if this is all that relevant…
But House appropriations committees – where lawmakers should be forging a new budget – have seen relatively little action in 2017.
The Appropriations General Services Committee has held two meetings in the last 20 days.
And with all the talk Illinoisans have heard from lawmakers about how the state funds public education, the Appropriations Elementary and Secondary Education Committee has met only twice in nearly 50 days.
There are currently no Senate appropriations bills in the House.
Beyond that, those approp committees tend to take testimony from agencies and various stakeholders, then craft proposals behind the scenes and then vote on them in public. The House Democrats are working on a budget. They invited the Republicans, but were rebuffed.
* There are plenty of reasons to criticize the House - so many that I couldn’t count them all. And while they could’ve voted on Senate bills as they trickled out of committee, that would’ve given them less time to deal with those bills in committee. So, six of one, half dozen of the other.
All that being said, this session does appear designed to keep House members scurrying around so they don’t have much time to cause trouble. Speaker Madigan freed just about every bill from Rules Committee earlier this spring, which flooded committees and kept his people pinned down in hearings and negotiations. And then came the May break, which caused more intense committee activity to deal with Senate bills.
But, hey, “Less than 6 hours!” is an easy thing to understand by a public that’s already disgusted with Springfield - even though it doesn’t really mean anything.
* Meanwhile, from a Rockford country music station…
Boy, it must be nice to get paid a lot of money by the taxpayers of Illinois, and goof around on the job. Leave it to your elected representatives.
Last time I checked, the state of Illinois did not have a budget and social service agencies and state vendors are waiting to paid. So, what was one of Rockford’s representatives to the Illinois House of Representatives doing? Working? Nope! She helping to planning a softball game on taxpayer time.
Yes, in the Illinois House, last week, representatives were caught on video wasting precious time to discuss the upcoming House vs. Senate softball game and basketball game.
Um, the offending video was from last year, not last week. Oops. That video was indeed from last week.
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Unsolicited advice
Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* We discussed this a bit yesterday…
CrisisCreatinRauner.com is a new website from the creators of Pritzker’s Democratic team for governor, featuring a “count-up” clock tracking the length of Illinois’ historic budget impasse.
While the website’s opening day on Monday was pretty spartan, Pritzker’s camp said there will be new information posted every day as part of a “multimedia campaign” to “highlight the budget crisis of Bruce Rauner’s own making and the families, schools, and social service agencies that continue to pay the price.”
For example, the Pritzker campaign said it will use the site to promote what it calls a link between President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget and the state’s failure to enact a comprehensive full-year budget under Rauner. They say Illinois has been a “testing ground” for “Trump-Rauner” budget policies.
“When Donald Trump proposes gutting funding for the programs that provide opportunity for working families, allow low-income students to go to college, and support survivors of domestic violence, Illinoisans know how this plays out. Bruce Rauner did it all first,” Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh said.
* The site’s Twitter feed is pretty heavy-handed. An example…
* As far as anti-Rauner tweets go, I much prefer the Illinois Working Together account…
Informative, snarky and biting. Those folks get Twitter.
* On the other side, the ILGOP does Twitter pretty well…
Heh.
…Adding… This is more like it…
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* Remember that somewhat odd Chris Kennedy video about property taxes yesterday? It outlined a problem, but offered no solution and wasn’t all that easy to watch, either.
Rick Pearson tried to follow up on a misleading aspect of the Kennedy video…
Kennedy’s statement that “because they pay less, we pay more” is arguably correct since a decline in property assessments on one property shifts the tax burden onto other property owners.
But Kennedy’s statement “because they pay less, our kids get less” isn’t true because schools have a fixed levy of money they request from property taxes. A decline in a property assessment doesn’t mean a decline in money that a school district will collect.
Asked about the misstatement, the Kennedy campaign offered a statement that did not address the question.
That campaign continually puzzles me.
*** UPDATE *** From the Kennedy campaign…
Sharing with you this comment that didn’t make it in morning spin, so for the record, we did address his question.
Chris Kennedy has been talking about how the property tax system is broken since before he was a candidate. It’s a prime example of Illinois’s regressive tax structure. The wealthy can catch breaks, which places a bigger tax burden on low-income and middle-class citizens. He knows this system doesn’t work for the vast majority of citizens and he’s the candidate who’s going to change it.
According to the Education Trust, Illinois school districts with the highest percentage of poor students received nearly 20 percent less funding than their more affluent peers. Meanwhile, poor and middle-class workers are paying more than their fair share. In fact, a WalletHub study reported that Illinois’s tax system receives more money from low-income and middle-class households than almost any other state in the country. We take more money from low-income and middle-class pockets and spend less on educating students from those same homes.
[ *** End Of Update *** ]
* And since Kennedy is complaining about property tax assessment appeals (including in a fundraising e-mail this morning), taking a look at his own appeals is fair game. But this one appears to be legit. Here’s Greg Hinz…
At issue is what the tax value should be on the 48-story apartment tower built on Wolf Point, the first of three large structures that are planned.
The tower opened for business early in 2016, and its value for tax purposes was initially set at $13.736 million by Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios—enough to pull in almost $3 million a year for local taxing bodies, primarily Chicago Public Schools. Kennedy and associates appealed, using the law firm of former Cook County Assessor Tom Tully, and the final value ended up being set at $5.109 million, a cut of almost 63 percent.
In an interview, Berrios’ top aide, Deputy Assessor for Valuation & Appeals Tom Jaconetty, not only defends the cut but suggests, in so many words, that the Kennedy group would have been fools not to seek it.
When a new building like this comes online, the assessor assumes that it is 100 percent occupied and producing a full revenue stream, Berrios said. In fact, that’s rarely the case, Jaconetty said, but it’s up to the owners to appeal. […]
In the case of the Wolf Point building, it had only 6 percent of its units rented and producing income in January when it opened, according to data collected by Appraisal Research Counselors, a Chicago consulting company. The figure jumped to 62.1 percent by July and kept climbing later in the year.
For tax year 2016, the county ended up settling on an average 33.8 percent occupancy figure. That change, combined with one internal math error, explains the 62 percent cut, Jaconetty said.
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Can we learn anything from California?
Monday, May 22, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Fritz Kaegi writes in Crain’s about how Illinois could learn from California, particularly since Gov. Rauner often invokes Silicon Valley as a model for jump-starting this state…
• Healthy universities are crucial. Stanford University Dean Fred Terman is acknowledged as the father of Silicon Valley. He brought in research funds, gathered leading academic talent, and encouraged professors to engage in business. In Illinois, the last two years of unreliable state university funding have driven out professors and applicants. High school counselors advise Illinoisans look elsewhere, driving record application levels in neighboring states. Smaller state universities face a negative spiral of lower applications, higher tuition, and credit downgrades.
• Noncompete clauses in employment contracts hurt talent acquisition and retention. In California, firms cannot limit employees’ freedom to work at competitors, giving it a leg up on the states that enforce noncompetition agreements. In Illinois, workers can be forced to the sidelines for years before they can compete with their former employers, reducing mobility and entrepreneurship. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg would have never been able to immediately hire Sheryl Sandberg and her team from Google in 2008 if they were based in Illinois. Illinois should extend the path-breaking Illinois Freedom to Work Act sponsored by Senators Patricia Van Pelt and Jacqueline Collins, which banned noncompetes for low-wage workers, to all Illinoisans.
• Business needs to embrace the new. In California, defying large corporations is part of the entrepreneurial ethic. We need more of that here. Too many are wary of stepping on the toes of grandees, whose deference has not been earned. All but two of the top 50 publicly traded Illinois companies, as measured by market capitalization, were founded more than 25 years ago (well done, salvage part vendor LKQ and trailer park operator Equity LifeStyle!). Only 13 of the 100 members of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club are founders of their respective companies, and 11 of these are financial companies. Meanwhile, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Salesforce and Tesla—all less than 20 years old—are now worth more than all Illinois public companies combined. Instead of getting policy ideas from executives who climbed the corporate ladder at companies created by others long ago, maybe we should listen to different people?
California has plenty of problems and we have many homegrown strengths. But we can learn from the example of its governor, Brown, who never badmouthed his own state even when fiscal times were tough and led his state to fiscal stability and entrepreneurial growth.
* Not only does Gov. Rauner often badmouth his own state, he at times seems to be cheerleading the exit from Illinois…
Not mentioned, of course, is that Indiana also has local income taxes.
…Adding… From comments…
Not mentioned, of course, is that Bruce Rauner supports taxing those home repairs.
Not mentioned, of course, is that Bruce Rauner’s cuts to higher education mean it will cost you more to attend college in Illinois.
Not mentioned, of course, is that you might use the $2,500 to pay off debt, but the state’s debt is more than $130 billion and climbing faster under Bruce Rauner.
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