That other rasping sound you heard last week, besides the voice of Harry Caray back in the TV booth, was our state’s business leaders sawing off the branch onto which Gov. Jim Edgar has climbed for the children of Illinois.
Too bad for Edgar. Maybe even a shame.
Oh, I’ve used this space to question the governor’s intestinal fortitude from time to time. Didn’t like the way he backed away from a proposed third airport at Lake Calumet or from legalized gambling in Chicago. As a leader, he seemed to prefer the path of least resistance.
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Then, midway through his second term, Jim Edgar surprised me, and a lot of other people, by tackling the thorniest issue in the state: The grossly unfair way Illinois funds its public schools. That is, the way property-rich school districts are able to spend big while property-poor school districts go begging. Suddenly, our soft-spoken governor from downstate Charleston has been raising his voice, loud and clear, about the unfairness of a system that spends as little as $3,000 a year on some kids and $15,000 a year on others, depending on where they live.
A career politician, Edgar did not climb this tree without political cover. Two years ago, after being safely re-elected he commissioned a blue-ribbon panel on education funding led by former University of Illinois President Stanley Ikenberry. The commission made many excellent recommendations, several having to do with raising quality and accountability in the public schools. But Ikenberry’s core proposal was that the state must guarantee that every school district have at its disposal at least $4,225 per year per student. And secondly, that state taxes be raised not just to provide the $500,000 it will take to provide this “foundation level,” but another $1.5 billion for statewide property tax relief.
The Ikenberry panel didn’t say just how the necessary $2 billion might be raised. This is where Gov. Jim Edgar bravely climbed out on the proverbial limb. After praising the Ikenberry findings last January in his State of the State speech, Edgar declared: “I believe the income tax is the fairest” way to raise the $2 billion. He said he was open to “other possibilities,” but in effect, Jim Edgar had added his voice to those advocating an increase in the state’s flat personal income tax rate to 4 percent from the current 3 percent.
This spring, Edgar has been going all over the state trying to build support for the Ikenberry/Edgar approach. This is a new Jim Edgar, a governor who roared back at Mayor Richard Daley to win a reprieve for Meigs Field, and who now is trying to repeat that performance by goading the legislature into solving the state’s worst fiscal and social problem.
Trouble is, the termites in silk suits have begun to chomp away on that tree limb.
Last week a coalition of the Chicago area’s top business and civic groups unveiled their prescription for what ails the state’s public schools. They call sternly for “deregulation and innovation.” They even call for a per-pupil “foundation level” of funding in every district. But they pointedly do not call for property tax relief per Ikenberry nor a tax increase per Edgar.
Instead, our business and civic leaders say they want a “streamlining of state government,” a “reallocation” of special category funds and a “targeting” of state revenue growth (from existing taxes) toward the neediest districts.
“That plan’s not going to fly,” was what Gregory Baise, president of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and a Business Coalition leader, said of the Ikenberry recommendations. “Because people know it will export money from the Elmhursts and the Hinsdales.”
Which is undoubtedly true. If the income tax is to be the vehicle of redistribution, and if the poorest school districts are to benefit most, any property tax relief that wealthy suburbs will get is going to be offset by higher income taxes its citizens will pay. There’s no hiding that arithmetic.
All of which means that the business leadership of this state does not want to be additionally taxed–either at home or at the office–so as to boost the resources available to schoolchildren in Bellwood, Harvey, North Chicago and the hundreds of other have-not communities across the state.
At least that’s where it stands now. But you never know.
Late last week, in conversations with certain other business and civic leaders, I got the impression that some members of the Business Coalition have not closed the door on Ikenberry/Edgar.
No doubt the “no new taxes” stance serves the conservative agenda of the Illinois and Chicagoland Chambers of Commerce, the Illinois Business Roundtable and the Illinois Manufacturer’s Association. But within other organizations that belong to the coalition such as the progressive-minded Metropolitan Planning Council and the powerful Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, there exists a good deal of ambivalence on the issue.
Ambivalence?
That’s what used to afflict Jim Edgar, before he discovered the courage of his convictions.
And look where it has gotten him. Our governor is out at the thin end of a long limb, watching “leaders” who should be out there with him as they hem and haw, chip and saw, and throw an occasional rock.
Too bad for Jim Edgar. He deserves better. As for shame, it’s all on those so-called business leaders.