Mayor Richard Daley and other Chicago-area mayors said Thursday they plan to drum up political and community support for an overhaul of the state’s educational funding system, but the leaders could not say when they will put a new funding proposal on the table.
Reduction of local property taxes, a primary revenue source for schools, will be “a beginning point” for any plan, said Elgin Mayor Edward Schock. The cut “has got to be significant … or we are not going to create the political will” to revamp the current system, he said.
A reduction of property taxes could be more than offset by such things as increases in the state income and sales taxes, but there could be other suggestions that come to the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus as the group arrives at a final proposal, Schock said.
Schock and Daley are among leaders of the group.
“We owe it to our children … to reform the system in a way that makes increased funding by the state guaranteed from year to year,” Daley said. “We owe it to our hard-working property-tax payers to reform the system in a way that takes the burden off their shoulders and holds our schools accountable for their tax dollars, as we’ve done in Chicago.”
Illinois pays 34 percent of the cost of public schools and ranks 49th in the nation in the proportion of state school funding it provides, caucus officials said.
Rising property taxes have been the result of the gap between what Springfield provides and what is needed, the mayors said.
On Tuesday, Chicago Public Schools officials proposed a $40 million property tax increase to help fund operations for 2005. Daley, who contends the increase is the only way to make ends meet, said the dream of homeownership is being threatened by rising taxes statewide.
The mayors’ group will seek to build “the political will needed” to change the school-funding system, Schock said. “Today’s [mayors’] summit was about beginning a dialogue,” he said. “If our efforts are going to be successful, we need to bring as broad a base of support as possible.”
“We do little Band-Aid solutions … but we never look at comprehensive reform,” said Barbara Toney, a member of the Hazel Crest School Finance Authority. “Every year we wait, children are losing precious time that can never be replaced.”
Cook County Assessor James Houlihan has called for a 25 percent reduction in property taxes statewide in a school-funding reform proposal that also would include an increase in the personal income tax to 4 percent from 3 percent, as well as a 1 percentage point reduction in the state’s portion of the sales tax but a broadening of its application to some services now exempt.
The change would generate another $1.5 billion annually for education, according to Houlihan.
The proposal “is a start,” Schock said. But a consensus must be reached about what changes are appropriate, he said.
