MOORE’S SUMMARY: Responding to a report from Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas titled “How State Laws Failed to Stop Decades of Skyrocketing Property Taxes,” Gov. JB Pritzker on Monday laid blame at the feet of local school districts.
IN A NUTSHELL: The report found that property taxes in Cook County increased at double the rate of inflation and well above the rate of wage growth during the past 30 years. And while property taxes are imposed at the local level, the report concluded that loopholes in state law made it easier for local officials to impose property tax increases.
The report suggested that “the time may be ripe for the General Assembly to finally provide property tax relief to Illinois residents and businesses.”
‘DIDN’T TAKE THE HINT’: Pritzker was quick to point out the well-known reason why the state’s property taxes rank as the highest in the nation: years of state underfunding of K-12 schools. In total, school districts make up about half of an Illinois property tax bill.
The state has been chipping away at it since the evidence-based funding formula was signed into law by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2017. In that time, state lawmakers have increased annual K-12 funding by more than $2.5 billion. More state funding should mean easing the burden locally, Pritzker said.
“But you know what? School boards didn’t take the hint,” Pritzker told reporters Monday in Chicago. “And so they’ve continued to ratchet up property taxes over and over and over again, and that has led to a continued very high property tax burden on homeowners across the state.”
MILLIONAIRE’S TAX? House Speaker Emanuel “Chris Welch, D-Hillside; former Gov. Pat Quinn, and some outside groups are pushing to place for a constitutional amendment on the ballot this November that would allow for a “millionaire’s tax” on top of the state’s flat income tax. Part of the revenue generated would go toward property tax relief.
Pritzker said “it could” alleviate some of the burden but wouldn’t do much on its own.
“Just like in dealing with pensions, you have to go at it from three or four or five or six angles in order to try to reduce the burden of local property taxes,” Pritzker said. “Look at this point, if we could just keep property tax(es) from going up, that would be (a) huge benefit to people across the state.”
CUTTING TO THE CHASE: Property taxes are determined at the local level, but it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. State policies have a significant impact on what local governments ultimately levy. Of course, there’s state funding levels for schools — the largest driver of local property taxes.
There’s also the need for local governments to keep up with increasing pension obligations. Just as the state increases its pension payments each year, local governments have been upping their payments into public safety pensions.
Local governments for years have complained of increased state mandates even as their cut of the state’s income tax has been reduced.
There have been proposals seeking to address the issue over the years. Perhaps most famously, Gov. Jim Edgar in the 1990s proposed a swap — increase the income tax in exchange for a reduction in property taxes. But it went nowhere in the legislature.
The bottom line: There are no easy solutions to alleviate the state’s property tax burden, especially with pensions expected to take up a large chunk of the state’s budget over the next two decades and the lack of political will to impose an income tax increase or broaden the state’s relatively narrow sales tax to capture more services.
LOOKING FORWARD: The Illinois Department of Revenue is also completing its own study of the state’s property tax system. It’s due by the end of July.
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