CTBA analysis shows that school districts around the state would see their funding threatened by Governor Bruce Rauner's amendatory veto of Senate Bill 1, the Evidence Based Model for School Funding Reform.
This report analyzes some of the major differences between SB1, the "Evidence-Based Funding for Student Success Act" that passed both chambers of the General Assembly; and SB1124, an alternative education funding reform bill sponsored by Senator Jason Barickman.
It finds that SB1 does not favor any school district-it does not create any special "bailout" of CPS-and instead creates a proportional, equitable distribution of new state funding for K-12 education.
Governor Bruce Rauner has made a property tax freeze a centerpiece of his demands for a full state budget, and the Illinois Senate passed a bill (SB484) that would enact a two-year freeze in May. But such a freeze, without provision for replacement revenue from the state, would effectively be a massive funding cut for K-12 education in Illinois.
Every school district in Illinois except for the Chicago Public Schools has its teacher pension payments made by the state as a consolidated payment to the Teachers Retirement System. Because of this, it is difficult to determine how much money these pension payments are worth to individual districts. CTBA has created per-district estimates for both normal cost (the payment that covers benefits being earned by current employees) and legacy cost (the debt service payment to make up for previous years' underfunding).
The Evidence-Based Funding for Student Success Act, or Senate Bill (SB) 1, was approved by the Illinois General Assembly on June 11, 2017. SB1 would significantly reform the how Illinois funds public schools by replacing an outdated, one-size-fits-all formula by calculating a unique adequacy level for each school district in the state, based on evidence-based best practices and demographics.
The Economic Development for a Growing Economy ("EDGE") Tax Credit program has released more than $1.6 billion in credits to companies promising to create or retain jobs in Illinois since its creation in 1999. But the evidence that tax incentive programs like EDGE produce real economic growth is limited, and EDGE credits in particular have been abused by companies simply moving jobs from one part of the state to another, as found by a 2015 Chicago Tribune investigation.
This is the first in a series of CTBA Fact Sheets reviewing the proposals in Governor Bruce Rauner's "Turnaround Agenda," which the Governor's office has made a precondition of signing any state budget.
Center for Tax and Budget Accountability Releases New Report on the Cost of Disinvestment in Higher Education
CHICAGO – Between 2000 and 2015, Illinois cut nearly $1.4 billion from General Fund appropriations to Higher Education—even before the ongoing budget crisis, which has cost Illinois colleges and universities over a billion addition dollars. That is one finding from Illinois’ Significant Disinvestment in Higher Education, a new report released today by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability (CTBA).
In 2014, CTBA released a report showing that the Chicago Housing Authority had accumulated over $400 million in reserves, in part by issuing an average of 13,000 fewer housing vouchers per year than the Authority was funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to do.
A proposed Constitutional amendment to put transportation-related revenues in a "lockbox" for transportation-related expenditures would only exacerbate the fiscal problems of both Illinois and its local governments.