By: Ted Dabrowski
If you’ve been in Illinois long enough to go through a school district tax hike referendum, you’ll understand what’s going on right now as state lawmakers prepare to vote on the 2025 state budget.
In those tax hike referendums, local residents are often faced with threats from school administrators that go something like this: Support the multi-million property tax increase or else face cuts to popular activities including art, music and sports. The tactic works, as all too often voters give in to the false choice. (Real spending reforms, like cutting administrative bloat, are never offered.)
Gov. J.B. Pritzker is doing a version of that right now with state lawmakers who don’t agree with the nearly $1 billion in tax hikes he’s put into his proposed $52.7 billion budget. The governor wants to hike sports betting taxes by $200 million. He’s pushing for another $500 million from tax hikes on companies. And there’s another $93 million tax hike on ordinary residents. The governor is not allowing the individual income tax standard deduction to fully rise with inflation.
To get his way, the governor, via his proxy Sen. Andy Manar, has sent out a letter to his agencies and lawmakers that effectively says “vote for the tax hikes or I’ll cut your district’s grants by $800 million.” Those are grants in the budget, typically of several million dollars, that lawmakers get for their districts to butter up their voter base. If those grants get cut, those lawmakers can become targets. As the Belleville-News Democrat reported: “While Manar’s letter was addressed to “Agency Directors,” it was just as much a message to rank-and-file lawmakers – particularly those within the supermajority Democratic party.”
Pritzker has given his Democratic allies the same false choice that school district officials often give their residents. You choose. Tax hikes or cuts to popular programs.
Where’s the harmony we’ve seen in Springfield for the last five years, you ask? That harmony was never real, but rather the result of the nearly $200 billion in covid aid that flowed into Illinois’ private and public sectors over the last three years. The windfall tax revenues into the state’s coffers gave Pritzker and his Democratic supermajority huge freedom to spend and harmonize. It’s what allowed the budget to jump from just $40 billion in 2019 to over $52 billion today.
Now that covid money is running out and Gov. Pritzker is scrambling to plug the hole. Hence, his call for more tax hikes. And threats.
Let’s watch and see what happens.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- New Census data: 75% of Illinois cities shrank last year, Chicago population drop nation’s 3rd-worst
- Illinois has more educators, less students than ever, yet officials complain about a ‘teacher shortage’
- Negligence or something more? Gov. Pritzker’s $827 million in taxpayer subsidies for Rivian.
- Lawsuit Filed Against State of Illinois Over Democrats’ Retroactive Election Rule Change
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Bring on the services cuts Fat Man. Most of us typical tax payers don’t use anything the State spends our money on anyway. Cut it and then Cut some more!
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Same old dog and pony show every year
Just keep in mind, his brother Jennifer is one of the few that is funding the push for trannies in schools and to turn your kids into trannies, people inheriting billions of dollars doing nothing to earn it is never a good idea.
I’ll take cuts for $1,000 Alex.
Really is time to try and vote this guy and his group out………remember he wants to run for pres………so this is just a test to how much you can take from this guy
Pritzker makes Quinn look like a historic statesman!
Funny but true
Good luck Chris, really good luck, the people in Chicago are absolutely nuts, it will never get fixed, if you live in Chicago move out, taxes are going to go even higher and crime will get worse and worse and worse, nothing will fix this problem. The only bright side to the story is, libtards are so stupid they love living in the insanity. I know someone who moved out of Chicago to Texas and she was telling me a libtard was complaining about Texas policies and decided to move back to Chicago, lol can you imagine the stupidity of… Read more »
And get ready for more tax hikes in 2026, 2027, 2028, ……………….. I hope your income goes up by enough to cover all the tax hikes coming your way, and to cover inflation, and to cover the lost revenue from people and businesses leaving, and to cover the expenses of the new illegals.
When did $52B become the baseline!? There is the problem – Pritzker seems to have gotten drunk with bailout money!
JackBolly, this is the “great reset” they were referring to. Look at the national debt and deficit spending the nation is on now. US is going into debt about $2 to $3 trillion a year now. I’ve said get out of Chicago while you can, and now that is changing to get out of the US while you can. This is not going to end well. Also even though my username is Trump2024, he is just as guilty of running up our debt about $8 trillion during the plandemic scam, the Republicans went right along with the spending.
Didn’t he have a plan to start paying down debt in the 2nd term?
You are absolutely right about Trump and republicans being as bad as democrats about spending at the federal level. As to Chris’s point about Trump saying he would pay down debt in his second term, any politician who tells you they will pay down debt in the future is lying to you. There is no evidence Trump would have cut back on spending. Even before Covid, he and the republicans were spending at an outrageous level. A strong economy, record high stock market, record unemployment, if there was any time to cut back spending, it was then and they didn’t… Read more »
How many reforms or at least streamlining the costs for many programs has he proposed? There is waste and inefficiencies in everything the state does.
I haven’t heard of Pritzker freezing hiring or furloughing or laying off or cutting pay and benefits of public employees. Sounds like there is plenty of $$$.
Just the opposite- government hiring has been used to hide the true job loss in Illinois.