Bankrupting Taxpayers, Destroying Property Values

By Jack Martin
Chairman, Taxpayers for Good Government

The Education establishment in the State of Illinois, led by the teachers unions, school administrators, school boards and the Democratic Party, are poised to empty the pocketbooks and savings accounts and destroy the property values of every property taxpayer and homeowner in the State.

High property taxes that seriously affect the ability of the typical family to buy and own a home will limit the market for new homeowners and those buying more expensive homes in the future.  This is already affecting property values in Lake County and some of the collar counties.

The educational establishment says they need more money to fund their programs and the growing student populations.  They cry to the legislature that the tax caps have hurt them and cost the schools millions of dollars that they would have been able to levy without voter approval or public accountability.

The plain fact is this: since tax caps were passed in 1991 through the 2004/05 school year, the schools in the State of Illinois have received over ten billion dollars ($10.69 billion) in additional revenue, more than doubling the revenue for education.

This gusher of public funding and support for education has doubled and is a 116 percent increase since the tax caps became law.  Yet, the education bureaucrats claim this is not enough.  They cannot explain why this amount, which is up nearly two and a half times the rate of inflation, is insufficient.  Inflation during the fourteen-year period was only 48 percent.

Average daily attendance of pupils in Illinois schools went from one point six million to one point eight million students, an increase of only seventeen percent.

The educators cannot explain why, with a seventeen percent student growth and a 116 percent growth in revenue, there is not enough money.

The total revenues supporting students in Illinois have gone from $5,755 to $10,673 for an 85 percent increase during a period of 44 percent inflation.

The public school bureaucrats continue to tell us that there is a crisis in funding for education in Illinois.

But when we look at the real cause of the school crisis, it is apparent the teacher union contracts, to fund the “enrichment” funds of the school districts and exorbitant teachers and administrators retirement compensation packages, are the root of the schools’ spending crisis.