Gov. Bruce Rauner’s first budget is drawing sharp criticism from village officials in River Forest, but local education officials were split on the proposal.
In a speech announcing his proposed budget Feb. 18, Rauner said he wants a 3 percent cut in cash the state pays to cities and villages across Illinois. The budget pitch also included $300 million in new funding for kindergarten through 12th-grade education and $25 million for early childhood education.
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Eric Palm, River Forest’s village administrator, slammed Rauner’s budget Wednesday afternoon.
“The governor’s reduction in shared income tax would be a crippling blow to the village of River Forest that would represent a nearly $600,000 reduction in revenues to our general operating fund — dollars that pay for police officers, firefighters and state mandated pension costs,” Palm said in an emailed statement.
Palm said the shared revenue agreement between the state and local municipalities over income tax authority represents a 45-year agreement and that the village would be in talks with state legislators regarding the governor’s “drastic proposal.”
In his speech, Rauner argued that local governments “are currently sitting on more than $15 billion in cash reserves.”
“The amount of money transferred to local governments has grown 42 percent over the past decade. The state currently transfers $6 billion every year to local governments,” said Rauner.
Rauner’s pitch for early childhood education drew a more measured reaction from Oak Park’s Collaboration for Early Childhood.
Carolyn Newberry-Schwartz, executive director of the nonprofit public-private partnership, said without seeing which types of programs will receive money and what the criteria will be, it’s hard to say whether the Oak Park area’s preschool-age children will benefit.
Even so, she said, “It’s a win for everybody that early childhood funding is increasing.”
The collaboration is in the midst of a five-year program intended to touch every child in the village and publicly funded by Oak Park Elementary School District 97, Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 and the village of Oak Park.
River Forest School Elementary School District 90 officials said they were on board with Rauner’s proposal to bring an additional $300 million in funding for kindergarten through 12th-grade education.
“District 90 supports any state budget that increases spending for preschool and K-12 education,” District 90 Superintendent Ed Condon said in an emailed statement. “As a supporter of the Vision 20/20 initiative, we also endorse equitable spending for all public schools.”
District 97 officials were less optimistic on Rauner’s plan, saying his budget appeared do little to fix Illinois’ problems with school funding.
“Governor Rauner’s proposed ‘turnaround’ budget, and its provisions regarding the distribution of aggregate amounts, pension reform, funding for local governments and property taxes, may continue what has become a disturbing trend for school districts throughout the state,” an emailed statement from a District 97 spokesman said.
With opposition from Democrats in the legislature building quickly, District 97 officials said they wanted to wait and see what the final budget looked like before dissecting it.
“We believe it is prudent to wait to perform any significant assessment or analysis of this budget since, based on the initial reaction from some of the state’s legislative leaders, it may look dramatically different moving forward,” the statement said.
Alex V. Hernandez and Rebecca R. Bibbs are freelance reporters for Pioneer Press.