Overview

• General Funds spending of $25.8 billion is up $1.4 billion or about 6%;
• The four-year total for the Blagojevich administration is $3.5 billion more than when he took office, or $1 billion more than the $2.5 billion increase Illinois saw during George Ryan’s tenure.
• More than $250 million in spending added to the Governor’s original budget proposal in order to get it passed.

Record-Setting Budget

• State Government spending at an all-time high;
• State debt is at an all-time high;
• Backlog of unpaid bills at an all-time high;
• Under-funds the worst funded pension system in the nation;
• Sets the stage for future pension raids;
• Ignores warnings of Fitch Ratings, making a downgrade almost inevitable;
• Illinois is 45th in the Nation in Job Growth since Blagojevich took office, trailing all other surrounding states.

Aren’t You Glad You Are Paying?

• $1 million for Bullying Prevention;
• $30,000 for an exhibit to honor legislators from Chicago State University;
• $200,000 to NEIU to conduct a study on the North Atlantic Slave Trade;
• More than $7 million in lump sums for the Department of Human Services for undisclosed uses;
• $50,000 for the South Suburban Disproportionate Minority Confinement Foundation;
• To cover the cost of insurance for the same-sex domestic partners of state employees.

Education Funding

Education gets $438 million increase. (Financed by short-changing the Teachers’ Retirement System by $495 million. Once again teachers are forced to use their own pension system to fund education in Illinois.)

How the education money is allocated:

• $170 increase in the foundation level to $5,334 at a cost of $239 million
• $56.7 million increase for Mandated Categoricals (which mainly benefit suburban schools. The $239 million to $56.7 million ratio (less than one to four) is about half the traditional ratio of one to two);
• $10 million increase for flat per-pupil grants;
• $45 million for the Governor’s Universal Pre-school initiative;
• $10 million for class-size reduction grants.

Veterans Scholarships

• No money added to the budget to pay for the Governor’s Veterans Scholarships which means the schools (and therefore other students) end up footing the bill.

Pension Raid Continues as Planned

• Budget underfunds worst funded pension systems in the nation by $1.1 billion;
• Budget does nothing to reverse the expected rating downgrade predicted by Fitch Ratings;
• Budget does nothing to prevent more post-election raids;
• Teachers Retirement System shorted by $495 million;
• State Universities Retirement System shorted by $140 million;
• Other systems shorted by $498 million;

Chicago Teachers Pensions

• The final budget adds $10 million for Chicago Teachers Pension
• Chicago Teachers Pension System gets fully funded ($75.2 million, up $300,000 from last year)
• Chicago Plan is 80% funded, while TRS is 60% funded.

(Chant:

It’s time to make a difference the kids, men and the women/Let’s stand for our beliefs, let’s stand for our vision/What about the children los ninos como

These kids have no parents, cause all of these mean laws.
See this can’t happen, not only about the Latins.

Asians, blacks and whites and all they do is adding
more and more, let’s not start a war

with all these hard workers,
they can’t help where they were born.)

Folks, there is a teacher lobby group called “A+ Illinois” going around the state asking school boards and other elected and private bodies to support a resolution, demanding lawmakers provide a different method of funding education.

Typically, they are using the same old tired story of how this is needed for fairness to students, to hide the real deal, more money for the system to abuse. The new method of funding is a large hike in income and sales taxes! The new funding method DOES NOT lower property taxes!

Below are state figures for the past fifteen years that show the increases that involve education. It is CLEAR, money is NOT the problem. The problem is the “lack” of accountability for those spending the ever growing “Billions” they do get. This history proves more tax monies will not help students, but only the bureaucracy who uses students for camouflage!

(15 Year Consumer Price Index = 39.2%)

Illinois Education "State Report Card" Information 1990 - 2005 :

Total Education Dollars (Billion) 2005 : $6,966,200,000 - $3,487,500,000 (1990) = $3,478,700,000 (99.7%) 15 Year Increase

General State Aid Dollars (Billion) 2005 : $3,712,331,000 - $2,077,733,000 (1990) = $1,634,598,000 (78.7%) 15 Year Increase

Operating Dollars Per Student 2005 : $8,786 - $4,519 (1990) = $4,267 (94.4%) 15 Year Increase

Student Enrollment 2005 : 2,062,912 - 1,766,186 (1990) = 296,726 (16.8%) 15 Year Increase

Teachers 2005: 128,079 - 101,732 (1990) = 26,347 (25.9%) 15 Year Increase

Administrators 2005 : 9,847 - 7,110 (1990) = 2,737 (38.5%) 15 Year Increase

Avg. Administration Salary 2005: $97,051 - $52,564 (1990) = $44,487 (84.6%) 15 Year Increase

Avg. Teacher Salary 2005 : $55,558 - $32,925 (1990) = $22,633 (68.7%) 15 Year Increase

Percent Of Students "NOT" Meeting Standards In Reading 2005 : 47.5% - 25% (1992) = 15.5% A 13 Year "Failure Increase" !

Percent Of Students "NOT" Meeting Standards In Math 2005 : 47.2% - 34% (1992) = 13.2% A 13 Year "Failure Increase" !

Percent Of Students Graduating 2005 : 87.4% - 80.8% (1992) = 6.6% A 13 Year Increase "Inspite Of The Failure Increases" !

Sincerely,

Jim Mangan, Pekin, Illinois

Quick, how much total do you pay in taxes? Perhaps the greatest innovation of bureacrats in the 20th century was the tax load shell game - the clever balkanization of the tax load that makes it nearly impossible for the average person to truly know how much they pay in taxes to the government.

Start with income taxes. April 15 is long gone for this year, but even so, how many people know how much they paid in income taxes last year? For many people, this is the single largest expense they have, but the total amount is disguised by the fact that most income taxes are taken out as direct payroll deduction. Governent employees everywhere in the US should get up in the morning and give thanks for direct payroll deduction -- without it, if every American had to write a single check once a year for the sum total of their annual income taxes, there would have long since been a revolution.

OK, so you don't know how much you paid in federal, state and local income taxes. But in addition to that, how much did you pay in social security and medicare (typically about 8% of salary)? Property taxes (typically 1-2% of your home value)? How about sales taxes (typically 6-9% of your purchases)? What about vehicle licensing fees and special taxes on hotels and airfare and rent carsand fuel? If you add all these up, the average American pays about 30% of his/her salary in taxes. The Tax Foundation has a great chart summarizing this shell game, with relative burdens expressed as days of work each year required to pay the tax. Note that on average, your federal income tax is only 1/3 of the total of what you are paying:

So those are the direct ones, but how much are you also paying in higher prices due to government import duties? What about the 8% FICA and medicare that employers pay on your behalf - how much higher might your salary be and how much lower the cost of the products you buy if they did not have to pay these? What about corporate taxes - you may not pay them directly, but they certainly get passed on to you in the form of higher prices and lower dividends on your 401k.

Friday, April 28, 2006

To Woodford County officials for agreeing to help Tazewell County get its tax bills in order. Under the agreement, Woodford Supervisor of Assessments Laurie Epkins will train new Tazewell employees in processing tax bills. Tazewell tax bills may be as much as two months late this year, in part because there's been so much turnover in the assessment office there. The delayed tax bills cost every Tazewell government money, because they either have to borrow in the interim or fail to earn interest. Counties must get bills out on time. This type of intergovernmental cooperation ought to help. There should be more of it.