Ted was on with Tom Miller this week talking about how Illinois is shrinking more than any other state in the nation.
“When you lose your population as Illinois is, restaurants can’t stay open, small businesses can’t stay open, companies can’t hire enough high-quality people…you can’t maintain your tax base, you can’t maintain quality of life, it becomes a death spiral.”
Read more at: Bleeding people: 93 of Illinois’ 102 counties lost people between 2010 and 2019
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Ted joined Jeff Daly to discuss why Illinois’ property taxes are such a national outlier, why Illinoisans are forced to pay the high, guaranteed salaries, benefits and pensions of the government class, why Illinoisans aren’t getting their money’s worth for what they pay, the teachers unions’ influence over elections, and more.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
Illinois’ dismal education numbers – especially for minority students – are embarrassing to politicians and officials. But rather than admit there’s a problem with Illinois’ education system, they attack the state’s own standards for being “too high,” instead.
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Whatever happened to following the letter of the law? Shall not impair or diminish seems to be written in stone in the Illinois Constitution. Fine. That said if you look at Article X Section 1 paragraph 3 it states. “The STATE has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education” What exactly defines “The State”? Is it property? Is it local taxing bodies? It is The State of Illinois not the state of Rockford or Chicago or Woodstock. Definition of “primary” as an adjective is First or Highest in rank of importance which means to me the state… Read more »
Then go ahead and sue the state. Your argument was won in Kansas when budget cuts hit education funding. Just keep in mind winning that lawsuit would most likely mean more taxes collected by the state. Oh and your local property taxes probably won’t go down. But who knows?
https://www.kansan.com/news/kansas-supreme-court-finds-school-funding-constitutional/article_0addee2a-8eb7-11e9-8d18-1b7b227041cf.html
Good article. I will look into that some more. I agree that would increase the tax rate more. Suing the state would not be an easy task considering then Dems hold power in all branches. Also the entire school cost is approx $30B or 15K for 2M students or almost as large as the yearly budget. I would like to see more local input from taxpayers but they are excluded from any negotiations as are the media/politicians. Not even the governor/reps/senators/even Madigan cannot attend those negotiations and they eventually write a check for approx 30% of whatever deal is made… Read more »
The end game of this dump-and-pump is yet to come, and it is preventable and predictable. Dump-and-pump Illinois: 1. Create policy which destroys asset value. 2. Insiders buy up busted out assets at fire sale prices, using leveraged loans backed by taxpayers at large, from friendly or family banks. 3. Revise policy to “rescue” “the people” from deleterious effects of asset value collapse. Voila! Illinois real property valuations reinflate, enriching those very same bad actors who created the conditions which had crammed them down in the first place. Predictable that real property asset values will fall off a cliff at… Read more »
The collapse is well on its way. Property values will continue to decline. As value falls below what is owed people stop paying on their loans. If you are underwater why not also stop paying p-tax’s? This is happening in many low value cities. It’ll keep working up the food chain to higher value homes. When houses in Naperville start falling into disrepair it’s pretty much over…American ingenuity used to say let’s fix this. In IL what you hear is..I’m outta here. There is not much of a fighting spirit to fix it.
Have you noticed that almost none of the people that left Illinois regret it? Instead they typically say something like, “best thing I ever did”. So my question to everyone still in Illinois is simply, “Why?”
45 days ago we packed up and moved to North Carolina. Every night I look at my wife and ask “why we didn’t do this years ago”? 500K home…..$3,500 real estate tax bill! Better schools, roads and health care. 6,999 less layers of government taxing bodies collecting a tax payer pension. Susan, great insight, but always remember when speaking to an Educational Professional “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CHILDEREN”!!
Exactly FUJB. Illinois residents simply need to make the move and just get it over with.
I’ve also noticed that most people I talk to have a plan, wish, desire, notion to one day leave.
Sadly, a plan, wish, desire, notion to one day leave means they may miss the window of opportunity. So far, Illinois is only slowly deteriorating. That could change quickly.
Woodstock IL is the perfect case study of property value death spiral. Woodstock has long maintained a property tax rate around 4% of fair market value, and has lost property value (relative to inflation and property value in Chicago and all of America) for 2 decades as a function of taxing bodies overspending the means of the community. In 2006-2008, massive public debt incurred to build new schools, and more horrifically destructive policy: enormous new hires of public employees in school district to serve anticipated new enrollment which never materialized. However, even when new development was canceled due to crash,… Read more »
Good comment.
Thank you. There is a surprising solution, using the very tools which have been so lucrative for bad guys exploiting their communities: 1. Incorporate most of Illinois as the Village of Libertaria. (Libertaria would rival Chicago in population, and so divert significant State sales and income taxes to Libertaria. And Legislators could not stymie Libertaria without similarly affecting Chicago). 2. By charter and ordinance, restrict Libertaria mayor and council from typical methods of corruption (public debt, patronage hiring). 3. Declare all property in Libertaria blighted, thus in TIF. For lifetime of TIF, abate all incremental taxes back to owners pro… Read more »
I wish I could have upvoted your post more than once
Thank you! I am trying to create a historical record of this time and place.
That’s how Teacher Unions bankrupt Cities, destroy home values and facilitate population loss!
I agree
My wife and I moved to a no tax state mid south this last March after 26 years of living in a western Chicago suburb. We built a new home in a school district with schools rated 7-9 on a 10 point scale. Our property taxes are coming in at 1/2% of Fair Market. That’s $2500/year on a $500,000 house. What a huge difference from what we we’re paying for schools and services of essentially the same value. How does our new county do it? Among many strategies, Our new county has one county wide school district. Few public sector… Read more »
Excellent summary. Left unchecked abuse of power is inevitable. People trust public officials to do what’s right, and that is a terrible, and costly, mistake. A western suburb I know well had a similar situation occur right before the crash, when they were trying to keep up with their nearby, well to do neighbors. Building ridiculous public structures and planning to do many more. Luckily, the crash put an end to it. And 13 years later those public buildings they wanted to replace are doing just fine.
I spend over 35 years in the “death spiral” know as Illinois. Saw property taxes double in 20 years only to see the education of children get worse. Ask yourself how many graduating high school kids staying in Illinois for higher education? easy answer NOT MANY! Tax and spend, tax and spend! Guess what will happen in 2021 You can’t continue to spend and wait for the man behind the curtain to bail you out. This is precisely why I left for greener pastures last month. More to follow. My advise……Don’t be the last rat on the sinking ship!
yup, it is fubar FUJB, indeed
My property taxes doubled in one year. Coles county
Don’t expect Wirepoints to tell you to get out. They do however recognize it as a perfectly rational response to the situation in Illinois.
So who are the people that are leaving? Typically those who contribute the most.
Of course. The state is full of givers and takers. When the givers feel unappreciated, or like their being taken advantage of, they simply won’t put up with indefinitely.
This question is for Ted. You keep saying financial chaos never before seen could happen, but I am sure you agree that would not be allowed for long. The federal government would not allow that to occur for very long. One state will not be allowed to collapse. So in the end forced change will happen, and even if there is chaos, it won’t last for long. I assume you agree? Otherwise you are just a doom and gloomer not based in reality. Illinois is a state of 12 million people, and it is too big to fail. I would… Read more »
John, I will let Ted answer, too, but we always respond if we see a question directed to us or anything challenging our articles. We have written often about various forms of potential federal intervention and when it would happen, particularly authorization for state bankruptcy, the Guaranty Clause, the Federal Reserve and direct bailouts. Direct financial help is likely, at least to some extent, and we have been writing or posting articles about that nearly every day. As far as something bigger, we think it will take a major crash for the federal government to act in a decisive way.… Read more »
I appreciate your response, but again, there is no way an entire state will just collapse and then nothing is done. No one will live here anymore as soon as they can, and no businesses will stay. That is not realistic, and it simply won’t happen. I am simply asking, do you agree with that? Something HAS to be done once things collapse.
It won’t go that far but the collapse is already happening. It will continue to get much worse.
I agree Mark, but people will just keep leaving until they fix it, and if it collapses then they will be forced into some sort of fix by the federal government if nothing else. Of course the US is heading towards collapse too as far as debt, as well as the world, so maybe we just all end up dying in a ditch after all.
P.S. If your answer is that the state would collapse and nothing would be done about it then I would not be able to take Wirepoints seriously anymore, that is all.
What would you have them do? What answer are you looking for? Clearly, as Mark has indicated, collapse has begun. Cuts have been made. More cuts will be made. More services diminished. What exactly are you claiming the Feds will, or must, backstop, John? I ask these questions all the time, but mine are about timing more than anything. You are asking about quality, but have some skin in the game here, what do you think will be “preserved”? Something like this hasn’t happened before. Why? No boomers existed, and not in this culture in this epoch.
The fact is a state of 12 million people will not be allowed to totally collapse and then stay that way, which Mark also agreed with. Whether it be passing state bankruptcy allowance or a bailout, one or the other will have to happen once collapse hits, or something similar or both, and quickly. Period.
What does that mean to you, “totally collapse”? The Fed is there to backstop SOMETHING. That’s all you need to know. We can’t read your mind on what you mean by what you say when they are generic terms, so be specific.
Unable to provide basic services to the state as a whole, services that must be provided by law. Pension default with no ability to raise taxes anymore and no ability to make any more cuts legally. That would be collapse.
Detroit is what I would call preliminary collapse. Bankruptcy in 2013 with pension and health and bondholder haircuts based on unrealistic numbers. Schools that still don’t teach and unoccupied houses that still need tearing down. Declining jobs. A moratorium on pension funding. NOW (with COVID multiplying the problems) the pension deficit grows and the remaining funds in the leaking bucket are going down. Landlords not collecting rent. City and school district not collecting property taxes. Public disorder growing. The original bankruptcy settlement was to buy a few years peace and get the STATE off the hook in having to cover… Read more »
Why should other States bail out Illinois’s CORRUPT DEMOCRAT PARTY?
And go after those public unions more guys, because they are the true cause of the lack of fixes in Illinois, not the politicians they own.
John, take a look at Detroit. That’s how Illinois is going to look, and its belongs to the CORRUPT DEMOCRAT PARTY!