Bea Danielson remembers the night her life changed.
It was Feb. 5, 1990, and the Evanston City Council had scheduled a municipal budget hearing. Danielson, a 69-year-old widow, decided to attend because her property tax assessment had jumped 69.5 percent in that year.
”I got there, and I met some people who were thinking the same things that I was thinking,” Danielson recalled. ”And they said to me, `Why don`t you get up and speak?` And I did, and I changed my life in 45 seconds.”
A year later, Danielson is spearheading a grassroots drive to cut in half the 18-member Evanston City Council.
Her group, the Evanston Tax Accountability Committee, already has succeeded in placing a binding referendum to that effect on the April 2 ballot. The impact, she says, will be to reduce government expenditures, and consequently reduce taxes.
But opponents argue that city taxes only make up a portion of the overall tax bill and that cutting the council`s size will have virtually no impact on the cost of government.
No matter who prevails, Danielson is confident that her committee`s efforts will not end.
”There`s still a lot of work to be done,” she said.
Such an attitude is typical of tax watchdog groups springing up across Illinois, and the metropolitan area in particular.
Some of the groups are decades old while others have been around for only a few weeks. A few monitor spending statewide, but the majority are local. They share the same goal-to monitor governmental taxation and spending. ”We`ve realized that a small group of people can have a big voice,”
said Ken Catelain, executive director of People Affecting Life in the Suburbs, which is based in northwest suburban Palatine Township.
Some groups unite behind one issue and then fade away. Others form because of one issue and stick together to battle several.
One new group, the Naperville-based Concerned Citizens for Credibility, Accountability and Planning, organized earlier this year to fight Indian Prairie District 204`s $19.2 million bond referendum that comes before the voters on Tuesday.
And the group plans to carry on after the election to be a watchdog to Naperville and Aurora municipal government, the local schools and Du Page County government.
”I love the community,” said Paul Cigna, the group`s chairman.
”The biggest problem I have is whether I can afford to retire here because of the way taxes are growing. And people who don`t care to get involved deserve everything our government does to us.”
Other tax watchdog groups, whether they`re working on the upcoming election or sitting this one out, echo those feelings.
How effective are they? It depends on where you look.
A few taxpayer groups, such as Du Page County-based We The People, take credit for the defeat of longtime incumbents who were associated with high property taxes, such as former Du Page County Board Chairman Jack T. Knuepfer. We The People`s Grassroots committee also fought an unsuccessful proposal to build a multimillion-dollar convention center in Du Page.
Nonetheless, We The People shies away from political campaigning.
”The voting process has always been left to individual initiative,”
said Christine Harris, chairwoman of the Grassroots committee.
Other groups target specific referendums or even candidates.
For example, the Arlington Heights branch of the Northwest Tax Watch played an instrumental role in defeating a 1989 referendum to expand the local library.
Du Page County Board Chairman Aldo E. Botti, who has become the poster boy of the anti-tax movement, shrugs off the effect of We The People, saying it`s more of a political action committee than a tax group.
”The true tax watchdogs are out there,” he said. ”They`re the people who are sending me letters, and they`re beginning a nonpolitical movement to reduce taxes.”
Botti pointed to the Glen Ellyn-based Initiative for Responsibility and Accountability in Tax Equity, and a similar group based in Elmhurst, as examples of this separate breed. He mentioned that another group is forming in his hometown, Hinsdale.
”These groups are forming with the philosophy of keeping the school boards in line, because that`s where the real tax spending is,” said Botti, who stunned Du Page last year when he defeated Knuepfer by using an ”ax taxes” platform.
While anti-tax fervor seems most prevalent in Du Page and the northwest suburbs, embryonic groups are found across the metropolitan area. In Will County, a group of Lockport-area residents have formed Taxpayers United to Reduce Tax Levies.
Similarly, a Homer Township group called Homer United to Reform the Tax System has begun pressuring local officials and state legislators to put caps on property taxes.
On the state level, the Taxpayers Federation of Illinois has monitored business-related issues for 51 years, and the Berwyn-based National Taxpayers United of Illinois has battled such projects as the proposed Chicago domed stadium and led the charge for the ill-fated state Tax Accountability Amendment, which would have made tax increases of more than 5 percent extremely difficult to approve.
The groups` tactics are usually similar, involving vocal participation at governmental meetings, phone calls to reporters and officials, mass mailings and advertisements, and endless hours of research and campaigning.
In the process, some watchdog groups earn dubious reputations.
”Right now, the state legislature thinks I`m a Scud attack gone wild,”
said Christine Harris of We The People, who successfully lobbied for a second round of hearings in Du Page on the proposed state property tax cap.
While most of the groups contend that they are apolitical, their membership clearly is not. For example, Robert Weilbacher of Schaumburg Households Against Further Taxation, is a candidate for village trustee, while the co-chairman of Danielson`s Evanston Tax Accountability Committee, Bernard Schmidt, is a candidate for the City Council.
Patrick Quinn of the Coalition for Political Honest ran successfully last year for state treasurer, and Gov. Jim Edgar in January appointed Douglas Whitley, president of the Taxpayers Federation of Illinois, to be the state revenue director.
Such officials as Botti say the watchdogs will continue to grow as long as property taxes are a political issue.
”The anti-tax movement will be here in this upcoming election, and it will be here in the next election,” he predicted.
”There`s real unrest out there, and that`s where the change is going to come from.”
