Everybody’s worried about their property taxes, yet the only proposals coming from the Democratic Party in Springfield aim to “solve the problem” by shifting the burden or by increasing state taxes with the promise they’ll reduce property taxes – which may or may not happen.

But there are actually ways to deal with the issue of property taxes themselves.

Of course, the number one way to reduce property taxes on homeowners is to recognize the bigger picture:  property taxes are spread across homeowners and commercial property.  The more prosperity we can achieve, in our area and in Illinois, the more of the property tax burden can borne by commercial property without being burdensome to businesses and driving them out of state or out of business.

But in addition, there are four tangible reforms which can chip away at the costs we all bear.

Reform 1:  Decrease the unfunded state mandates for local school spending.  These include such requirements as

• Requiring high levels of test performance for students to exit the bilingual ed program,  so much so that US-born children of immigrants often stay in ESL classes even into their high school years, and costly mandates even for students transitioning out of the program (such as requiring smaller class size or a second teacher in the classroom),
• Mandates for all-day kindergarten at no additional cost to parents, and
• New mandates for foreign-language requirements for high school graduation, requiring the hiring of additional staff, as well as a laundry list of other mandatory additions to the curriculum, such as activist-civics education, instruction in LGBTQ+ and Asian American history, and climate change education.

Because there’s no universal agreement on where “reasonable expectations” end and “unfair mandates” start, the first step is to require a full accounting of the costs added to local schools for mandates imposed in the last two decades, and to require any new bills include a calculation of their costs to local schools, not just the impact on the Illinois budget.

Reform 2: Reform the TIF district law to prevent “double dipping.”

Here’s what this means:

As things stand, local municipalities have wide discretion to define an area as “blighted” and thus eligible to be declared a TIF (tax increment financing) district.  It doesn’t need to actually be decaying, much less the sort of slum or abandoned buildings the label “blighted” implies.  All that’s really required is a belief that the town’s planners can achieve a better outcome with tax subsidies.

To somewhat simplify matters, once a town creates a TIF, the district properties’ contribution to the school districts and other property tax recipients is frozen, based on the property assessments at the time, even as everyone else’s assessments increase with inflation or overall property value trends.  The increase in tax revenue goes into the TIF budget which is then used for TIF-related projects — in Arlington Heights, for instance, the original downtown TIF funds were used for such things as the construction of the parking garages.

But the amount of tax money the schools take in, or the tax levy, doesn’t decrease.  The “tax cap” law allows the schools to increase their levy each year by the rate of inflation, and then they spread the costs of the levy across all the taxpayers.  When a TIF district means the TIF fund keeps part of the property taxes for the TIF properties, the rest of the taxpayers pay more than they otherwise would.

And here’s the “double-dipping” part:  if there’s leftover money after the special projects are funded, or a “TIF surplus,” that money doesn’t go back to taxpayers to make up for the extra taxes they paid earlier.  It goes to the schools, as extra money.  And when the TIF is ended, and the full amount of the tax is available to go to the schools, it again doesn’t offset taxpayer costs, but the schools are allowed to claim the additional money as a sort of “bonus” on top of the usual levy.

Which all means that a reform should be straightforward: except to the degree that new construction in a TIF results in new students, the added revenue from a TIF surplus or the end of a TIF duration, simply should serve to reduce everyone else’s taxes, not add to government spending.

Secondarily, to be fair to taxpayers whose assessments grow with inflation, the “frozen” value of a TIF district assessment must be increased with inflation year-over-year, and only the additional increase in value beyond inflation should be used to fund TIF projects.

Reform 3: eliminate – or at least make it much harder – for school districts to spend their tax revenue on bells and whistles, then demand bonds for deferred maintenance, by placing districts which do so under a “probationary” status with outside scrutiny of their budgets going forward to ensure maintenance and appropriate reserves for future needs.

Local residents have seen Township High School District 214 announce that $850 million is needed for “essential” repairs — although dishonestly they first claimed that the whole $850 million is “necessary to keep our students and teachers safe, warm, and dry,” and now the superintendent has said “it was never going to be $850 million.”

And it isn’t just 214.  It’s the same story over and over again:  tax revenues are spent to expand school programs to compete with the wealthiest districts, offer the newest technology, increase teacher salaries, boost extra curriculars, and then maintenance is deferred until it can be bundled with some capital project for a bond issue, always with the claim that “it’s less than the cost of a pizza.”  Locally, it occurred in District 25, District 23, and District 220 in recent years.  It’s irresponsible and it drives up the cost of education, bit by bit.

Reform 4:  Eliminate duplicate or unneeded local government entities throughout the state whenever they drive up costs.  This includes small school districts with single schools whenever they can feasibly be combined with neighboring districts or merged across levels (elementary and secondary) to reduce Illinois schools’ high administrative costs.  It includes townships which completely overlap with incorporated municipalities (which might in turn require villages/cities to annex unincorporated areas which are completely surrounded).  It includes folding the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District into County government rather than keeping it as a separate board with generously paid political officials.

And if you’re asking, how can we even consider cutting the amount of money schools get when they need more money than they have, consider this:

It’s well known by now that Chicago has near-empty schools kept open at ruinous cost by the union.

Outside of Chicago, there are many forms of school spending which don’t actually add value.  To give two examples, schools boost teachers’ salaries for earning a master’s degree, and the school district reimburses tuition costs, but there is no evidence that earning this degree makes teachers better at their jobs.  (This research comes from the left-leaning Brookings Institute, not some kind of far-right group.)  And a report on teacher’s professional development training found that these significant expenditures (in dollars, on average $18,000 per teacher, and lost classroom time) are “largely a waste.”  (The report dates to 2015 but I can’t find anything that suggests improvements since then.)  Beyond this, of course, what matters most for student learning is a strong curriculum: learning to sound out words rather than guessing and sight words, direct instruction in subjects such as math and science rather than prioritizing “student-led problem-solving” and “discovery,” and evidence-based curriculum rather than, as happened locally in School District 59 before plummeting test scores and a parent revolt, the discarding of an established curriculum in favor of teachers being expected to design their own.  And no amount of intensive tutoring or small class sizes will make a difference with a bad curriculum.

The bottom line is this: there are legislative reforms that can provide real property tax relief rather than just shifting costs or false promises of “taxing the rich.”