Illinois Senator Andy Manar introduced an amendment to Senate Bill 1, the new SB 16 yesterday (by Bev Johns)

“Overall, SB 1 proposes NO new money, just a shifting of current money. SB 1 would change all of school funding in Illinois by taking away dedicated funding for special education teachers and other professional personnel. 

“SB 1 does NOT change the maximum amount of General State Aid (GSA) money that has been in Illinois law since the 2009-2012 school year: $6,119 per pupil. SB 1 would take away special education money and use PART of that money for a block grant and PART of special education money to shift funding from one school district to another.

“The one change for special education in SB 1 from SB 16 is that the assumed number of special education students, 13.8 percent, can be increased if a district has up to 18.8 percent of students with disabilities. The weighting factor for the special education block grant remains at a much too low 1.0, and the future base percentage for the block grant remains a guess provided by ISBE as to the number of students with disabilities in public schools (rather than the number of students with IEPs).

“Senate Bill 1 is largely an attempt to cover over a failure to fund Illinois schools by taking away direct funding of special education teachers and re-distributing that money in a block grant. The GSA formulas worked very well when Illinois was properly funding schools and still partly work today.

“Special education Personnel Reimbursement, which is separate from GSA, now provides $9,000 for each special education teacher, each school social worker, each school psychologist, each school nurse and other professionals that work full-time with special education students.

“SB 1 would completely abolish this dedicated funding for special education Personnel Reimbursement, which now provides up to 1/3 of a special education teacher’s salary in a poor district, but less than 1/10 of that salary for some teachers in a wealthy district.

“This school year under GSA, the 64 highest wealth school districts are entitled to receive only $218 per student, while the 86 poorest school districts are entitled to receive over $4,000 per student. This school year, Illinois is funding only 89 percent of those GSA amounts (proration). In other words, the poorest school districts are losing over 6 percent of their total budgets, while the wealthy school districts are losing about 1 percent of their total budgets.

“More importantly, Illinois has failed for years to provide the needed funding increases for K to 12 education. In 2002, by State law, Illinois was to provide $4,560 per student through a combination of State and local funds (which was determined based on low-spending but high achieving school districts). Now, by State law, Illinois is to provide only $6,119, although the amount determined based on low-spending but high achieving school districts is $8,672.

“As Jim Broadway, Illinois School News Service, stated on January 6, ‘The formula no longer works’ because ‘the original formula was crafted to work satisfactorily as long as the state's share of total PK-12 public school funding would be 50% or so, with the local share maybe 40% to 42% and the feds paying the rest. As the state's share has fallen from a peak of about 48.5% in the mid-1970s to less than 30% of the total today, the portion paid by local property owners has ballooned to 60% or more.’

“You cannot cover over the failure of Illinois to fund schools by blaming formulas that work as intended when schools get the funds they need.”

Bev Johns

For details about Manar’s updates, click here. 

Chicago for Sale by Paul Buchheit

“Chicago is being privatized. Assets are being sold off. Wall Street debt is mounting, and the mayor conducts business with multi-millionaire donors who often reap benefits from their connections to City Hall. The people of Chicago, who will be electing their next mayor on February 24, need to know the facts about their city’s financial problems. Some of these facts won’t be found in the mainstream media.

“Like Detroit in 2013, Chicago is becoming a symbol of a divided nation, of a society crippled by a 35-year-old notion that the ‘public good’ is somehow un-American. Other U.S. cities have learned that their people and their public services are not products to be bought and sold. Chicago, under Rahm Emanuel and Richie Daley and an assortment of Illinois Governors, has been headed in the other direction.

“Schools for Sale: It starts with the public schools, the anchors of their communities and centers of equal opportunity for our children. Illinois cut education spending by a greater percentage than any other state in fiscal 2012, and for 2013 it was third-worst in cuts per student. Privatizers rushed in and blamed the public system. As a result, 50 neighborhood schools were closed in Chicago, opening the way for charter schools, which take taxpayer money but have little accountability to the public and an obligation only to their investors.

“No Money. Whose Fault? In recent years the state’s largest corporations have been paying only about a third of their required state taxes. Many of these companies have avoided their taxes by threatening to relocate in other states, effectively holding Illinois hostage, while reducing their tax payments by billions of dollars. The plunder goes beyond that. A report by the nonprofit Good Jobs First revealed that over 300 Illinois companies are KEEPING the state taxes paid by their employees. That’s right – the ‘Economic Development for a Growing Economy’ (EDGE) Tax Credit gives corporate subsidies of tens of millions of dollars meant for education and infrastructure, while average citizens make up the difference.

“More Outrageous Corporate Subsidies: Illinois is paying more in corporate subsidies, tax breaks, and loopholes than it pays each year toward its pension fund. As one example, the state has hundreds of companies enjoying TIF subsidies, which divert tax revenue from schools to business development. Hundreds of millions of dollars are lost to our public schools.

“Some of the corporate subsidies are hard to believe. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), for example, with billions of untaxed contracts worth well over a quadrillion dollars, and whose profit margin in recent years is higher than any of the top 100 companies in the nation, had the hubris to demand an $85 million per year tax break. They got it.

“The Middle Class Ends Up Paying: Chicago has one of the highest sales tax rates in the country. Illinois has the second highest property taxes in the nation. The Illinois state income tax rate was increased by a whopping 66%, then adjusted downward, but still 25% higher than five years ago.

“It’s little wonder that a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy lists Illinois as one of the ‘Terrible Ten’ most tax-regressive states, imposing a much higher rate on poor residents for sales and excise taxes, property taxes and income taxes.

“Deprived of revenue by tax-avoiding corporations, and lacking any semblance of progressive taxation, it’s also no surprise that, according to Reuters, Illinois has the worst-funded state pension system and the lowest credit ratings among all 50 states. Chicago’s pension shortfall, stunningly, is several times worse than Detroit’s at the time of its bankruptcy.

“It’s More Than Just the Schools: With corporations and individuals paying less taxes, a ‘starve the beast’ mentality has taken over, with the public system being blamed for an inability to function, and a call for privatization to come to the rescue. This impacts much more than schools. Parking meters, Ventra rapid transit, CPS custodians, expressway billboards, and Skyway tolls have all undergone at least partial privatization.

“Even the vital area of pre-K education is set up to benefit big business, with noble-sounding social impact bonds likely to double the profits of Goldman Sachs and other investors in the next few years.

“It Goes Far Beyond Chicago: Many cities and states have come to their senses. Pennsylvania has been fighting the takeover of their celebrated turnpike. Atlanta managed to end a disastrous privatization experiment with United Water. Towns in California and Pennsylvania also fought water deals that led to rapid rate increases, job losses, and service inefficiencies. There are numerous examples that reveal the folly of selling off pieces of the common good.

“Yet Chicago, along with the entire state of Illinois, continues to falter, having been undermined by tax-avoiding corporations and a business-friendly government. Privatizers are positioning themselves for the kill. The voters on February 24 should be saying over and over: ‘Don’t Sell Chicago!’”


Chicago for Sale by Paul Buchheit was published in NationofChange. It is posted with permission from the author.
 
Paul Buchheit is a college teacher with formal training in language development and cognitive science. He is the founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, RappingHistory.org, PayUpNow.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

What if Police Powers…? By John Dillon

“…[W]hat happens if Illinois is able to unlock its own chains and shackles from decades of avoidance of payments to the pension systems by using the legal canard of Police Powers to deny what is owed to those who worked for the state? 

“Attorney General Lisa Madigan would tell you that she (and the state) would be able to pay for these significant human services that are in desperate need of succor due to lack of money.   Hmmmm.

“Would she or anyone like her father address the structural fiscal deficit in the state? Or – God help us all – if she were to prevail in the Supreme Court – would she declare the pharmacists, the health care providers, the businesses that have done business with the state a terrible drain on the economy in Illinois and therefore subject to the need for Police Powers to break more contracts?

“In fact, if she were to win her necessity argument before the Illinois Supreme Court – why pay anything owed again?  To anybody?”

What if Police Powers…? By John Dillon 

Commentary (Redux):

...There is no threat to the “public’s safety, health, and morals as well as peace, well-being and order of the state”; nor is the State of Illinois dealing with an economic emergency of such magnitude that the state’s politicians are compelled to invoke such powers “to protect the state's citizens and serve a reasonable public purpose or need.” 

Politicians who are attempting to subvert the Illinois Constitution, such as Lisa Madigan and other pension thieves, prefer to blame investment losses as well as the precarious longevity of some public employees for the state’s financial troubles. 

Had the state’s politicians not siphoned off public pension assets (by not fully contributing to the systems for decades), the five public pension systems would be nearly funded and would have withstood the financial crisis of 2008-09. 

Lisa Madigan and other self-interested pension thieves insist on cutting pensions as their final solution, instead of considering more comprehensive, legal and ethical strategies for addressing the unfunded liabilities they had created. Shifting future costs to public employees has been their immoral modus operandi for a very long time. 

Thus, nothing has been done about the flawed “Pension Ramp” of 1995. Nothing has been done about the antiquated, flawed tax structure; though, ironically, the state’s politicians allowed the state's needed income taxes to expire while perpetuating continuous theft of public employees’ constitutional rights and benefits…

About Those So-called Emergency Police Powers Again