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* Doug Wilson at the Herald-Whig took at look at some of what the Illinois Policy Institute’s budget proposal would do to the Quincy area. First up, doing away with municipal government revenue sharing…

Quincy Mayor Kyle Moore said that would cost the city an estimated $3.8 million a year.

“This would obviously be devastating to city services, especially since our share (of) the corporate personal property replacement tax was reduced by $400,000 last fiscal year,” Moore said.

* Now, the property tax freeze…

“We’ve worked hard to be conservative stewards of tax dollars … and decreased operating costs by $1.5 million in the last few years. This practice has allowed us to only minimally increase the tax rate when absolutely necessary,” [Mike Elbe, president of John Wood Community College] said.

“If you completely freeze property taxes and combine that with existing lack of state support, it will significantly limit the college’s ability to fund the array of workforce and college transfer programs that currently serve our students and district. The remaining source of funding is student tuition, which is capped at certain levels to maintain accessibility to high-quality education.”

* On to the almost billion dollar cut to higher education…

Matt Bierman, interim vice president of administrative services at Western Illinois University in Macomb, said the school already has faced a huge funding shortfall because of the budget battle. An audit of WIU released last week shows that the school has been forced to cut employment and find other ways to eliminate costs.

“We were shorted by about $30 million in 2016 over what we got in 2015. So last year we spent about that much from our reserves,” Bierman said.

I get why university and college presidents are so reticent to talk about this stuff. They don’t want to scare off current or prospective students. But that was a bit on the weak side.

All in all, though, a pretty solid piece. And there’s more, including local legislative react, so click here.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 1:58 pm

Comments

Unrelated: has anyone asked the Lt. Guv what she thinks of this mess, and asked what she is doing to get us a budget?

Comment by Not It Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 2:06 pm
Perhaps Universities should stop thinking of themselves as sacred cows. End “paid sabbaticals”. And do away with all the useless “institutes” and money sucking programs that do nothing for a student’s education while feathering the nests of tenured professors. They don’t like having daylight on themselves now. If nothing else, all of us who had to find additional means of income to try to keep our kids out of a mountain of student debt already knew this.

Comment by Doi Chef Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 2:07 pm
Yesterday the Board of Higher Education met and ratified an agreement naming Karen Hunter Anderson, Executive Director of the Illinois Community College Board, as now also the Executive Director of IBHE. Since there hasn’t been any news coverage of this yet I do not know if it is permanent or temporary. IBHE oversees program approval at Illinois Community Colleges among the other sectors. IBHE also makes budget recommendations for the state’s community colleges and public universities. ICCB has pushed off and on for several years to add bachelor’s degrees at community college campuses but IBHE has opposed the move. Naming KHA as the head of both agencies is a huge conflict of interest.

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 2:08 pm
The Governor’s Think Tank is ruffling a few feathers out there.

Comment by OkComputer Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 2:26 pm
Doi Chef. Amen
Bravo.

Comment by Blue dog dem Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 3:13 pm
On the bright side, grabbing munis share of the income tax and freezing property taxes would increase the pressure for allowing muni bankruptcy.

Which is the IPI/Rauner objective, as they think muni bankruptcies would be a union-buster.

By now, you can’t believe Rauner or his crew are concerned with fiscal sobriety, can you?

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 4:24 pm
Doi Chef -
Specific examples, please. Beyond Wayne Watson.

Comment by Smitty Irving Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 4:27 pm
Doi Chef it seems like your idea of higher education is to simply teach students, which is fine, just be up front about that. However, the argument could just as easily be made that universities exist to not only educate but to advance knowledge through research which is where the institutes and paid sabbaticals serve their purpose. Also over the decades think about all the advances that have come from public universities, UIUC’s work on the development of the internet as 1 example.
Final thought, do you honestly think eliminating all of Western’s sabbaticals and any State funding for institutes equals the $30 million lost in 1 year?

Comment by MyTwoCents Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 5:05 pm
The universities are in a very tough spot. They can’t relay the depth of their precarious financial situation publicly because it threatens to deter students and their tuition income which would accelerate the death spiral they find themselves desperately trying to avoid.

And Matt Bierman is one the best out there. He’s got a very tough job.

Comment by Pontiac Tuesday, Feb 7, 17 @ 8:09 pm
Municipals share ofCPPRT reductions were done several years ago by Quinn to fund regional superintendents and others. Some say its a violation of state law but that matters not.

Comment by NorthsideNoMore Wednesday, Feb 8, 17 @ 4:31 am