Tax Referendum Legislation Adds New Shell Game
The Daily Herald reported this story yesterday about new legislation proposed to simplify tax referendums. It does simplify the referendum for the school district and not the taxpayer however. This bill allows the District the freedom to place them oney in different funds. This is not helping the taxpayer. We vote on a specific fund. If the District can put the money in any fund, then where will the accountability be? This is a bill designed to sound good, while only helping the School Districts. It will be another way for District to play shell games with the money.
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A plan to simplify tax referendums Legislation would make real cost of tax-hike requests clearer to voters By Jeffrey Gaunt When suburban school officials ask voters for tax-rate increases, they typically use a simple formula. The assessed value of your house, multiplied by their proposed rate increase, equals how much more you’ll pay. For years, voters have headed to the polls with those numbers in mind — and they’ve paid the price. This year alone, 14 suburban school districts collected $59æmillion more than most voters would have expected, based on that simple calculation. That’s $59 million on top of the extra voters agreed to pay through the increase. In the past five years, those districts, and 11 others like them, have collected a total of $263æmillion more than the standard calculation suggests. Lawmakers now have four more working days to agree on a solution — or in the spring taxpayers again will vote on increases costing far more than they might expect. A legislative plan, which lawmakers failed to approve in the spring, would do more than save homeowners a lot of money. The proposal from state Sen. Don Harmon, an Oak Park Democrat, and state Rep. Mike Tryon, a Crystal Lake Republican, would also make the real cost of future tax requests more obvious when voters head to the polls. And school officials — whether or not voters have approved a tax hike — would all get more flexibility in deciding how to spend their money each year. “We’re very satisfied,” |
