An initiative to put Illinois' Property Tax Extension Limitation Law before the voters in Woodford County once again went down in flames at tonight's regular Woodford County Board Meeting.
We thought there was a 50-50 chance of PTELL ending up on the November '08 ballot. Boy, were we wrong. It wasn't even close. It was soundly voted down, and if you take the Board members' explanations of their votes at face value, it was voted down for the most ridiculous and uninformed reasons imaginable. Here's a sampling:
"If you look at rates, I've done research, they haven't gone up that much . . ."
What do "rates" have to do with PTELL? NOTHING!
"We and others have CUT taxes in the past. I don't know if we could DO that under PTELL"
Oh, we don't think that would be a problem.
"Larger population areas shouldn't be able to tell smaller population areas what to do with their schools."
Huh? Under PTELL, as under the current laws, no one, no how, outside of a taxing district can tell that district how much money they can raise. The question of extensions in excess of the ceiling goes to the voters in and only in that district. How is this "unfair"?
"I was GOING to ask for this to be tabled for more study, but I'm not going to now, and I'm voting against letting the voters decide on this issue, BECAUSE SOME OF THE PROPONENTS HERE TONIGHT ARE USING EMOTIONAL, PATRIOTIC, INFERENCES . . ."
Well that's as good a reason as any of the others.
"I don't appreciate one of the board members making veiled threats . . . so I'm voting against it"
Yes, well, nothing like voting on the merit of the proposal.
"We [the County Board] can't solve your property tax problems"
The implication is "so why should we even try. It's not our problem."
"I don't know what the impact of PTELL has been on the counties that have it. I wish some of the "public input" speakers would have presented some facts on that. I'm voting against it"
Gee, Mr. Board member. Maybe you could have Googled PTELL before the meeting and boned up a bit. One name that would have come up is woodfordtaxfacts.org. We'd have been delighted to accommodate you. The Illinois Department of Revenue has voluminous non-biased information on PTELL and its implementation. Or you could have asked your finance committee for that information BEFORE YOU VOTED! And these are the same folks that said in the same breath (with nary a grin in sight) that the voters have trusted THEM to make taxing decisions!
It went on and on. We have access to video of some of this stuff and we'll attempt to cross post it over on YouTube and here. It's quite entertaining.
We were so shocked by some of the votes that we missed the final tally - more on that tomorrow - but it must have been nearly 2 to 1 against.
A lot of the tough talk from the last Republican Primary contest for Board seats seems to have gone all squishy when it came to PTELL.
Update:
The PJS says the vote was 9-5:
We thought there was a 50-50 chance of PTELL ending up on the November '08 ballot. Boy, were we wrong. It wasn't even close. It was soundly voted down, and if you take the Board members' explanations of their votes at face value, it was voted down for the most ridiculous and uninformed reasons imaginable. Here's a sampling:
"If you look at rates, I've done research, they haven't gone up that much . . ."
What do "rates" have to do with PTELL? NOTHING!
"We and others have CUT taxes in the past. I don't know if we could DO that under PTELL"
Oh, we don't think that would be a problem.
"Larger population areas shouldn't be able to tell smaller population areas what to do with their schools."
Huh? Under PTELL, as under the current laws, no one, no how, outside of a taxing district can tell that district how much money they can raise. The question of extensions in excess of the ceiling goes to the voters in and only in that district. How is this "unfair"?
"I was GOING to ask for this to be tabled for more study, but I'm not going to now, and I'm voting against letting the voters decide on this issue, BECAUSE SOME OF THE PROPONENTS HERE TONIGHT ARE USING EMOTIONAL, PATRIOTIC, INFERENCES . . ."
Well that's as good a reason as any of the others.
"I don't appreciate one of the board members making veiled threats . . . so I'm voting against it"
Yes, well, nothing like voting on the merit of the proposal.
"We [the County Board] can't solve your property tax problems"
The implication is "so why should we even try. It's not our problem."
"I don't know what the impact of PTELL has been on the counties that have it. I wish some of the "public input" speakers would have presented some facts on that. I'm voting against it"
Gee, Mr. Board member. Maybe you could have Googled PTELL before the meeting and boned up a bit. One name that would have come up is woodfordtaxfacts.org. We'd have been delighted to accommodate you. The Illinois Department of Revenue has voluminous non-biased information on PTELL and its implementation. Or you could have asked your finance committee for that information BEFORE YOU VOTED! And these are the same folks that said in the same breath (with nary a grin in sight) that the voters have trusted THEM to make taxing decisions!
It went on and on. We have access to video of some of this stuff and we'll attempt to cross post it over on YouTube and here. It's quite entertaining.
We were so shocked by some of the votes that we missed the final tally - more on that tomorrow - but it must have been nearly 2 to 1 against.
A lot of the tough talk from the last Republican Primary contest for Board seats seems to have gone all squishy when it came to PTELL.
Update:
The PJS says the vote was 9-5:
"Voting against putting PTELL on the ballot were Larry Whitaker, Kenneth Uphoff, Caroline Schertz, Joel Lemkemann, Gary Joseph, Gary Jones, Thomas Karr, James Fyke and Glazier. Voting in favor were Pete Lambie, Marcus Adams, Thomas Evans, Thomas Janssen and John Krug."
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