Your property taxes pay for government workers’ guaranteed salaries, benefits and pensions while you get no such guarantees – Wirepoints on with Jeff Daly of WZUS Decatur Radio
April 18, 2024
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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.
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.
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.
Missing from the Comptroller’s message is that instead of cutting expenses to match revenues, which is very difficult due to state laws mandating spending regardless of revenues, and instead of changing the state laws mandating spending, the state borrowed money by issuing bonds. So a challenge is how to fix a state which passed entitlements and spending which were not possible to fund with existing revenues…that was known when such laws were originally passed. The politicians who passed such entitlements and spending which resulted in votes from special interests are not going to scale the entitlements and spending back. Also… Read more »
Leaving Illinois is the only way to stop this madness.
Two of the three “Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Fast Facts” are from Fiscal Year 2018.
however, fortunately, no one will actually read it in the mad rush to bank the check.