We were surprised this past week when a group of local state lawmakers – both Republicans and Democrats – told a gathering of Yorkville School District 115 officials that they do not expect the General Assembly to approve property tax freeze legislation in the near future.
Voters should keep that in mind over the next several months as we are bombarded with television commercials and mailers from vote-seeking candidates touting support for a property tax freeze. And why not? Coming out firmly in support of a property tax freeze has worked for candidates in both parties for years.
Our current governor, Bruce Rauner, is just one of the more recent, striking examples. Rauner ran four years ago on a platform that included a property tax freeze. Rauner even launched his own online petition drive in support of the effort at the aptly named website freezemytaxes.com. But, here we are now, four years later, and the only thing that has happened with property taxes in Kendall County or the rest of the state is that they have continued their steady climb into the stratosphere.
Why a freeze hasn’t happened is tied in with state lawmakers’ decades-old inability to overhaul the way we pay for public education in this state. Here in Kendall County, usually between 60 and 70 percent of every property tax bill paid goes to fund local public school districts. The story is pretty much the same throughout the rest of the state. Before state lawmakers can freeze property taxes, they would have to offset the loss of revenue to the schools by imposing some other kind of significant new tax or hiking sales or income taxes.
In her comments to the Yorkville school officials, state Sen. Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, a Democrat from Shorewood whose legislative district includes section of Kendall and Will counties, noted that the constituents in her district want two things: lower property taxes and a good education for their kids. She then described the property tax freeze effort as “not rational” given the conflicting desires of her constituents and those across the state.
“Freezing property taxes, we’re not going to do that, especially once people understand that there are rates involved and you can’t want good education and then want your property taxes frozen,” Bertino-Tarrant said.
Instead, Bertino-Tarrant said she would rather work to “fund our education system properly” and noted that would involve the state increasing its share of local school funding. “That is how we reduce property taxes,” she said.
But that remains the conundrum. In the absence of a major overhaul of how we pay for schools, the calls for a property tax freeze will remain nothing more than a handy device for candidates to use at election time and then be safely tucked away until the next election cycle begins.