POLITICS

Notable achievements in any field of human endeavor often present an interesting problem: What do you do for an encore? In the case of the Illinois General Assembly this spring, the answer may well be, "Not much." The suspicion that 1996 will be a ho-hum legislative exercise in comparison to the extraordinarily productive session of a year ago rests on a couple of factors:

* The Republican majorities pushed through most of their program last year, much of it within the first few weeks of the session. Cook County tax caps, tort reform, truth-in-sentencing, welfare changes — all those high-profile GOP causes are now on the books.

The items that are left, meanwhile, tend to be ones on which GOP lawmakers are split, like workers compensation or downstate tax caps.

• Republican leaders are determined to avoid controversial issues this spring that might jeopardize re-election for rank-and-file members — and GOP legislative control — in the November election.

Those political realities make all the more noteworthy the relatively ambitious agenda Gov. Jim Edgar laid before the legislature in his sixth State of the State message last month.

No doubt the boldest element in the governor's program was his call for action this spring to revamp what he termed the "unfair and uneven" way in which the state funds elementary and secondary education, a result of relying too heavily on local property taxes. The governor said he expected a "realistic and politically doable" plan from an education finance task force headed by former University of Illinois President Stanley Ikenberry.

The boldest element in the governor's program is his call for a change this spring in the school funding formula.

"I am confident this commission will give recommendations that we can accept and move on," Edgar told lawmakers. "I am very hopeful that we can endorse and embrace those recommendations before the final gavel falls on this session."

The case for overhauling school funding has been overwhelming for years.

The state currently picks up only about 31 percent of the tab for elementary and secondary education, while local property taxpayers shoulder almost 60 percent of the bill. (Federal funds account for the remainder.)

Because of the heavy reliance on local taxes, vast disparities exist in financial support available to students in the state's 900-plus school districts.

"There is a lack of equity where tax dollars support a pupil in one district by $4,000, and a pupil in another district right next door is supported by more than $10,000," the governor said.

Indeed, at the same tax rates, the total local taxable wealth for the state's richest unit school district (kindergarten through 12th grade) would produce about 87 times as much tax revenue as the poorest district's base, according to a recent study by the Illinois Tax Foundation.

An answer to the school funding problem has seemed equally clear — moving to the state income tax from local property taxes as the mainstay of education finance.

In fact, such a shift was a key campaign plank of Edgar's 1994 Demomitic challenger, former Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch.

The hangup, however, always has been the massive tax increase that would be needed to pay for the reform; this school year, for example, the state would have to spend some $6.3 billion, or about $2.4 billion more than the actual appropriation, to hit the 50 percent mark. That would require an increase of about 40 percent in the income tax rates.

So, not surprisingly, Republican leaders shied away from Edgar's call for school finance reform, no doubt figuring any income tax increase — even one offset dollar-for-dollar by property tax relief — would be political suicide.

Instead, Senate President James "Pate" Philip of Wood Dale and House Speaker Fee A. Daniels of Elmhurst suggested that lawmakers could ask voters in November whether they wanted a change. In fact, the two GOP leaders were even reluctant to consider Edgar's proposal to tax more heavily the huge profits being raked in by the state's riverboat gambling industry.

Still, the governor deserves credit

42 * February 1996 Illinois Issues

for finally assuming a leadership role on the school funding issue.

Tucked into his address, meanwhile, was an intriguing proposal that could help mitigate, albeit indirectly, some of the pernicious effects inherent in the current system of school finance.

Edgar announced the state would build, then pay the ongoing operational costs, of a statewide network of high-tech phone lines linking every school district in Illinois to the information superhighway. The governor said the state also would expand an existing state program that shows teachers how to better integrate technology into the learning process.

"Technology can be one of the great equalizers of educational opportunities across Illinois," Edgar noted. "We are building classrooms without walls, classrooms where wealth and geographic location do not define educational achievement."

A major criticism of the current system is that students in "wealthy" districts have access to better teachers, richer curricula, more extensive libraries, and superior equipment and facilities than their colleagues in "poor" districts. Edgar's plan for guaranteed access to the Internet, a vast, worldwide collection of information sources, would help level the playing field. And interactive technology could let students in the state's poorest rural districts choose from as wide a variety of courses — taught by top educators in each field — as are now available in wealthy suburban districts.

The cost of the network will be substantial, of course, but still cheaper than the billions of dollars that would be needed to place local school districts on equal financial footing.

Thus, the governor's plan offers lawmakers a chance to treat some of the ills of the current system without taking the harsh medicine of higher taxes — and that should prove a popular prescription. *

Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Illinois Issues February 1996 * 43