The state provided less than 40 percent of the funds needed to run elementary and secondary public schools last year, Comptroller Roland Burris said Thursday in a report predicting continued calls for a tax increase if the state share doesn`t rise.
Despite the report, a Burris spokesman said it was ”premature” for the Democratic comptroller-also a possible candidate for governor in 1990-to support a tax increase that Republican Gov. James Thompson already has said he will seek from the General Assembly this spring.
Thompson has been unsuccessful in the last two years in an attempt to win a tax increase from the Democratic-controlled legislature.
”The governor`s plans have differed significantly over the last two years, so the comptroller is not going to take a position on any tax proposal until it`s in writing,” Burris spokesman Al Manning said.
Burris opposed Thompson`s 1986 tax request on grounds that it was ”too much,” said Rick Davis, another Burris spokesman. Burris said last year that he would support a tax increase earmarked to increase the state`s share of financing for schools, Davis said, but he did not specifically endorse Thompson`s plan.
In his report on school financing, Burris said Illinois provided 39.3 percent of the funds needed to run public elementary and secondary schools in the 1987-88 school year, compared with the 43.9 percent it provided during the 1978-79 school year.
Local funds, raised through property taxes, accounted for 52.7 percent of school funds last year, Burris said, and federal funds represented 8 percent. In 1978-79, local funds accounted for 47.3 of the money to run the schools, and federal funds accounted for 8.8 percent, according to the report. ”We`re not disagreeing with the comptroller,” said Robert Mandeville, Thompson`s budget director. ”This is something we`ve been saying for two years.
”Education is not receiving enough. The only reasonable answer is to find more revenue.”
State School Supt. Ted Sanders already has announced plans to seek a budget increase of about 16 percent, or about $404 million, this spring from the legislature for elementary and secondary educational programs, said Lee Milner, a spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Education.
More Top Picks Smoke Alarm
Milner said, ”The picture I believe the Burris report paints is that Illinois is sorely in need of state support for education.”
Sanders has placed 155 of Illinois` 997 school districts on a ”financial watch list” because their cash balances were less than 5 percent of their budgets as of June 30, 1987.
Many officials of schools on the list blame the lack of adequate state funding for their financial problems.
”How can a district like ours not be in financial difficulty?” said Supt. James White of Queen Bee School District 16 in Glendale Heights, one of those on the list. Queen Bee has seen its share of state funds reduced, White said, and also failed three times to win voter approval for a property tax increase before finally succeeding in November, 1987.