Family Taxpayers Foundation

Cary, Illinois resident Chris Jenner writes in today’s (February 7, 2007) Chicago Tribune:

"Change the way Illinois schools are funded" is the latest pro-tax edu-speak catchphrase. "Schools need more money" and "It's for the children" weren't working as well as they used to. All three mean "Coerce more money out of taxpayers to continue gorging the insatiable pig that our public school system has become."

Back on October 6, 2004, Chris Jenner testified at an Illinois Senate Education Committee hearing regarding HB750 held in Joliet. Below is his statement.

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Good afternoon. My name is Chris Jenner, I'm a private citizen from Cary, up in McHenry County. I have three elementary school aged children. My concern for their future is why I'm here today. The education they receive in the next several years will have a significant bearing on their prospects for future success. Even more important to their future is the amount of freedom today's lawmakers leave for them. By that measure, passage of House Bill 750 will make their future, and that of all of today's children in Illinois very bleak.

I'll first say a few things about House Bill 750, some things that perhaps you haven't heard before, some things that Mr. Martire doesn't bring up in any of the shows in his ongoing state tour. I'll then relate some truly fair, ethical, and honest ways to resolve the financial problems facing our schools.

We regularly hear from Mr. Martire and his followers that Illinois ranks 48th in the nation in the amount of school funding provided by the state. Let me cite a few more rankings from the same study, the NEA's Rankings & Estimates.

Illinois ranks 14th in public school revenue per student (average daily attendance)
Illinois ranks 3rd in public school revenue as a percentage of combined state and local revenues Illinois ranks 25th in state / local spending on education as a percentage of all spending (above national average)
Illinois ranks 11th in K-12 public school spending per student (average daily attendance)

Illinois schools are NOT poorly funded.

At one of Mr. [Ralph] Martire's presentations that I attended a couple weeks ago, he proclaimed "We don't pay enough to have kids pass tests." The increased foundation level in House Bill 750 is predicated on a study correlating test scores to spending by a firm called Augenblick & Myers.

I find it interesting that Augenblick & Myers has done similar studies for some 30 other states, and invariably winds up recommending huge increases in state funding for education. This study from Augenblick & Myers demands independent scrutiny to determine its validity if we plan to base a five billion dollar tax increase on it. Where is the oversight? There are other, more scholarly studies, such as one by the American Legislative Exchange Council, that show little, and perhaps negative, correlation between spending and test scores.

House Bill 750 calls for annual foundation level increases to be tied to the Employment Cost Index, a rate Mr. Martire said rises faster than the rate of inflation. In fact, from 1998 to 2003, the ECI rose by 20.9%, while the CPI rose by only 12.9%. Many private industry wages are tied to the CPI. With the structure of House Bill 750, it appears education will perpetually take an ever larger portion of taxpayer earnings. What happens when public education wants 100% of taxpayer earnings? That's not all.

During the same time that the ECI rose 20.9%, school spending as measured by operational expenditures per pupil, rose by 30.2%. Taxpayers already can't keep up with the ECI, which doesn't come close to keeping up with school spending. Within this structure, how can House Bill 750 possibly provide a sustainable solution to the school finance problem? The real "structural deficit" that Mr. Martire frequently mentions isn't fixed by House Bill 750, it's in House Bill 750!

Eighty percent of Illinois school districts are deficit spending. Are there any districts currently funded above the new foundation level that are deficit spending? How many will be deficit spending if House Bill 750 passes? I asked Mr. Martire that question two weeks ago. At the time, he said they were "running that number." But that it would be less than the current 80%. That seems like a rather important number to have before proposing a five billion dollar tax increase. More importantly, why isn't the answer that no district will be deficit spending after this much cash is infused into the system?

Aside from increasing the personal income tax by 67%, House Bill 750 calls for significant increases in corporate income taxes and adds sales tax to a myriad of currently untaxed services.

After the recent recession, private industry is running lean. I know. I work there. Businesses will not absorb these tax increases completely, perhaps hardly at all. Therefore, House Bill 750 guarantees prices of goods and services produced in Illinois will rise. Thankfully, there is still a significant amount of free market left in America. In a free market, when prices rise, demand drops. When demand drops, business volume drops. Businesses either contract, move somewhere more friendly, or fold.

What would House Bill 750 do to the business climate in Illinois? It's highly doubtful the effect would be negligible or positive. Before even considering House Bill 750, this is something else that must be critically -- not anecdotally or unscientifically -- analyzed. Senators, did any services trade organizations or unions contribute to your campaigns?

Are any of them part of your constituency? Have you asked them how significantly increased taxes would affect them?

A primary selling point of House Bill 750 is the 25% property tax reduction. 25%, that's swell. Does anything prevent my school district from running another property tax increase referendum the day after House Bill 750 passes?

More and more voters are seeing government's insatiable spending addiction. With the recent spending record of government and its schools, how quickly will this property tax relief evaporate?

House Bill 750 is bad for Illinois taxpayers. It's bad for Illinois business. It's bad for the future of Illinois children. It will be bad for your political careers. It's bad for Illinois.

Passing House Bill 750 won't fix school financial problems, at least not for any length of time. And as good a thing as permanently burying it would be, doing that also wouldn't fix the problem. What can we do?

Mr. Martire has said that House Bill 750 does not address the spending, or cost, side of the equation.

The bill unquestioningly assumes that all cost and spending increases, no matter how high, must be met with increased funding, i.e. increased taxes. Mr. Martire defends this by pointing to an education trade publication that gave Illinois an A- in accountability. How credible is Education Week when it gives an A- in accountability to a state where 80% of the districts are deficit spending?!

The spending problem in the Illinois public schools FAR outweighs what some call the "funding crisis". The recently retired superintendent of elementary school district 15 is a poster for where the real problem lies. In the 1998 - 99 school year, Dr. Conyers was paid $160,895. In 2002 - 2003, he was paid $353,351.

The increases over those five years cost District 15 $487,125. For one employee, who couldn't have gone anywhere else in Illinois and gotten paid even close to that. Half a million dollars on one employee's salary. And now the District 15 board is running a tax increase referendum this coming April. It's warning voters of program cuts if the referendum doesn't pass, and it's even using the taxpayer funded school web site to promote the tax hike.

How dare school boards agree to employee salaries the districts can't afford, then go to taxpayers and say, "Raise your taxes, or we need to cut programs and teachers." Of course, school boards may not have a lot of choice. Collective bargaining laws in Illinois are among the most teacher union-friendly in the nation.

In 40 states, teacher strikes are illegal. Illinois is not one of the 40.

There are things the Illinois General Assembly can do to permanently fix the problem. Criminalize teacher strikes. End tenure. Ban forced union dues, which require school districts to garnish wages of teachers that don't wish to join the union. Revise collective bargaining laws to put school boards on equal negotiating footing with teacher unions. End state subsidy of the Teacher Retirement System, which will soon become a taxpayer funded bailout.

I understand it will be nearly impossible for most of you to do the right thing -- to oppose House Bill 750 and make legislative changes that would permanently fix our schools' financial problem. The same organizations that fund Mr. Martire's Center for Tax also fund many of your campaigns. And they would lose big time if House Bill 750 were tabled in favor of some of the solutions I have proposed. Senators del Valle, Lightford, Meeks, as well as Mr. Martire's Center for Tax have all received thousands of dollars from the teacher unions. Why does it seem like the teacher unions are trying to purchase passage of this bill?

Senators, school spending at three times the rate of inflation and generous salary increases that continued unabated through a recession -- while thousands of private industry jobs were lost -- have pushed your constituents past the breaking point. We'll no longer sit idle while the General Assembly can't think of anything to do other than constantly raise taxes.

Teacher unions won't be able to buy your trips back to Springfield any more. We're not going away.

Mr. Martire freely admits House Bill 750 has no checks on spending. An education trade rag's grade is our only guarantee schools won't just blow this new infusion of cash and come back asking for more. With responsible, accountable, and efficient spending, and some free market influence, schools would have money squirting out of their ears, and we'd be done with tax rate increases for education.

Look beyond the children's classroom this year, and the unfair lack of new textbooks. Look beyond the 5 - 7 years for which property tax increase referendums and HB750 claim to fix the alleged funding problem.

Look just one generation in the future, when today's second grader Sally and first grader Johnny want to get married, buy a house, and have children of their own.

With HB750 and its mentality, where can Sally and Johnny afford to live, having well over half THEIR earnings forcibly taken by government, much to the glee of A+ Illinois, The League of Women Voters, Voices for Children, and the IFT, IEA, and their local affiliates?

Please give my children and Illinois' children a free and prosperous future, not an oppressive tax burden.

Fix school finances the right way, the responsible way. Table House Bill 750. I've given you some ideas of where to go from there.

Posted February 7, 2007.