Last spring, Republican Gov. Jim Edgar tried to make his legacy by fixing the sorry way that state money goes to schools. He wound up getting embarrassed by his friends.
The Democrats, the supposed opposition, fell all over themselves to help the governor pass his plan. But Edgar’s fellow Republicans, they wiped his face with it.
Well, the Republicans are back at it. And they’re making nice this time.
Over the summer, Edgar and the Republicans put their egos aside and started to talk quietly about how they can get an agreement on school funding. It looks like they’ll have one ready when the legislature goes back to work in a month.
People familiar with the talks say Edgar, Senate President James “Pate” Philip and House Minority Leader Lee Daniels are close to a deal to make sure that every school district in the state has enough money to provide a basic education.
The deal will guarantee that every district has at least $4,225 available for each student, the so-called “foundation” level for an adequate education. If they can find the money, the negotiators will up the ante to $4,300 per student.
There will be a bond program providing at least $1 billion in state money to fix up dilapidated schools.
There will be no increase in the state income tax. Edgar had no choice but to surrender on the tax hike. He couldn’t get it passed when he was an immensely popular governor, and he certainly can’t get it passed now that he’s an immensely popular lame duck.
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So the income tax hike is dead. That means property-tax cuts are dead, too, and that’s too bad.
The Republicans haven’t decided exactly how they’re going to pay for this deal, but they have plenty of ideas on the table–and none is the kind of deal-breaker that an income tax hike turned out to be last spring.
There will be increased taxes on cigarettes and telephone messages, and possibly a reduction in a discount that retailers get for paying their sales taxes on time. More than $100 million will come from unexpected tax revenue that is coming in because the state’s economy is still booming.
Unfortunately, it looks like the lawmakers are going to take a pass on an obvious money source–higher taxes on riverboat casinos. Those boats sure do have clout.
The deal will include changes in how schools operate, more dramatic changes than the school-reform plans would have accomplished last spring.
That’s likely to mean a longer school year, tougher rules on teachers’ strikes, doubling the time it takes to win tenure, and new rules for teacher certification.
A few bomb-lets are being talked about, like a cap on school superintendents’ salaries and local referendums to ban school strikes.
Could it all fall apart again? Sure it could. But there are a few reasons why it might not.
The income tax won’t be an issue. He tried, but Edgar couldn’t convince enough of his fellow Republicans that his trade-off of higher income taxes for lower property taxes was a good offer. More to the point, he couldn’t convince enough Republicans that voting for it wouldn’t be suicide.
What’s left is school reform, and the very appealing notion of guaranteeing that every child in the state has $4,225 attached to her book bag. The deal is likely to kick in some more money for schools this year and guarantee the foundation level starting with the 1998-99 school year.
So who comes out ahead? Downstate schools, mostly. That’s where most of the districts are that spend less than the “foundation” level. Urban schools have a chance of winning if the final deal steers more money toward low-income children.
While nobody really loses, there could be a lot of people in Chicago and the suburbs feeling a bit empty-handed. There will be money for them to fix up schools, but there probably won’t be more money for day-to-day operations.
There also won’t be property-tax relief for the suburbanites in wealthier districts who pay almost the entire cost for their schools because the state gives them next to nothing. Tax reform is dead because the Republicans are scared to death of it.
Edgar has met twice with Philip and Daniels on this deal, and their aides have been huddling regularly to work out the details. While House Speaker Michael Madigan hasn’t been invited to the negotiations, he has been kept up to date on the talks by the governor’s office.
The Republicans figure that Madigan is likely to back almost any deal. He put almost all of his House members on a vote to hike the income tax earlier this year and they don’t have a dime to show for it. They Republicans think the Democrats are vulnerable and need some cover.
What the Republicans are cooking up now is, at best, half a solution, since it does nothing to wean the schools–particularly city and suburban schools–from the hated property tax.
And if the Republican legislators wind up offering a deal that only promises to reach a foundation level in two years, Edgar ought to tell them to stuff it. That will be as phony as the plans they were offering last spring.
But my guess is that they’ll find a way to provide the money by the start of the next school year.
Then the Republicans will get up together and call it a compromise. But the people who follow this issue closely will notice that it looks an awful lot like the same plan the House Republicans offered in the spring.
Yes, it looks a whole lot like that plan.
So when this new deal becomes the law, maybe the House Republicans will be courteous enough not to stand up next to Edgar, pound on their chests and say: We won, you lost.
But, they could. For better or worse, they have won.