With a record number of Democrats at his side, Senate President Emil Jones used the inauguration of a new legislature Wednesday to call for school funding reform and an end to inequities in education between rich and poor communities.
“We should be the leaders in doing the right thing,” Jones said. “We have an opportunity to teach all the children if we make the commitment to do the job.”
Jones said Gov. Rod Blagojevich had made a good start by putting more money into schools but needed to do more. Blagojevich, who opposes higher sales and income taxes, left the Senate chamber without offering a response to one of his biggest political allies.
As a new Illinois House was sworn in, Speaker Michael Madigan declared the state’s current budget a mess that needed to be straightened out as part of an effort to boost support for schools.
Blagojevich, Jones and Madigan–all three Chicago Democrats–will largely chart the state’s course for a spring legislative session that even many Democrats predict privately will be long, drawn out and fraught with difficulties.
Jones’ leadership is even more emboldened with a 37-22 majority over Republicans, the largest number of Democrats in the Senate since at least 1880, if ever. But Jones and Madigan both used the opening day of the 95th General Assembly to stress a desire for bipartisan cooperation
“Working together,” Jones said, “we can accomplish many things in the upcoming session. We can do the things that the people expect us to do. We must bring about real change to the outrageous, inequitable system that funds our schools.”
In his own inaugural address, Madigan said the need to make school funding more equitable throughout the state is a necessity.
“Now how do you do that? That’s why we’re going to have a spirited debate through this session of the General Assembly,” Madigan said after his speech. “I’m not going to be the faint of heart. That’s not going to be me.”
Illinois has been criticized nationally for large disparities in spending among school districts, mainly due to dependence on property taxes for funding.
The highest-spending districts in the state, many in wealthy Chicago suburbs, are spending more than $15,000 per pupil or more. At the same time, Illinois also ranks at the bottom of the nation in terms of state government’s contribution to education, with less than 30 percent of school budgets coming from state dollars.
Madigan, the state’s longest-serving House speaker, begins the new session with a 66-52 majority. He warned the state’s fiscal problems “will not be cured by quick and easy fixes that provide some relief now, but by their very nature will create a funding hole in the future.”
Many of Blagojevich’s proposals to generate new revenues for the state have often been criticized as budget maneuvers that only provide one-time fixes. For schools, he is pushing forward with the idea of selling or leasing the lottery to help support schools, although that idea has met with great skepticism from lawmakers.
Jones outlined an ultimate goal of having state government provide more than half of all school funding. He called for increasing the amount of money the poorest schools in the state receive as well as a funding plan for new school construction.
Jones said all options are on the table now, except for raising the state sales tax because it is too regressive. He has long supported increasing the income tax and expanding gambling as well as various ways to exchange a higher income tax for lower property taxes.
Madigan did not say a general tax increase would be on the negotiating table when the spring session heats up. But he said a recent report on state budget problems by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago provided a “wake-up call, and we ought not to fall asleep.”
“We ought to just stand up, acknowledge this is going to be difficult, not easy, get ready for some tough choices,” said Madigan, who has previously supported higher taxes for education and local government.
Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson (R-Greenville) said he was hopeful that the decades-long gridlock over massive education funding reform could be addressed.
“It sounds like finally maybe something will be done,” Watson said.
But Republicans also maintained Democrats should have been listening to their budget warnings.
“Republicans have spent two and half years saying, `Quit spending. Quit raiding the pension. Quit not paying your Medicaid bills,”‘ House Minority Leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego) said. “We are willing to sit down and see what we need to do, but we’ve been saying this for two years.”
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