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Saturday, February 26, 2005

By Ralf Seiffe

OPINION - The executives that run the school business got disappointing news in Tuesday’s municipal elections.

Voters squashed tax referenda in five of six Northern Illinois districts and that might not be the worst of it. A new, aggressive taxpayer coalition has formed that signals the days of routine school tax increases may be over.

For years, voters approved school tax referenda because they thought the increases were “for the children”.

While voters value education and opportunity as much as ever, they cannot understand why school spending is rising at multiples of the inflation rate. This runaway spending translates into higher property taxes making voters take a more critical look at how the education business functions.

What they are finding is not exactly what they expected. Shocks include administrators' and teachers' salaries doubling to a quarter-million in four years; district employees retiring in their mid-fifties and collecting more than a million pension dollars before normal taxpayers even reach retirement age, health insurance deductibles paid by school districts and no lay-offs---ever.

Jim Peschke, the founder of Citizens for Responsible And Fair Taxes (CRAFT) enjoys winning tax contests by exposing embarrassing facts like these.

He has created a very compelling presentation that debunks the emotional justification on which school referenda depend. Peschke replaces sentiment with spending facts advocates for higher taxes find impossible to overcome. His anti-referendum template equalizes resource-starved grass roots activists with pro-tax advocates who may spend as much as 100 times more in a losing effort.

Now, several local groups, including CRAFT, the Family Taxpayer Network (FTN) and The Northwest Tax Watch (NTW) have joined the Illinois chapter of Freedom Works to form the “Coalition for Our Children’s Future”.

Using Peschke’s successful template, the new organization’s objective is to “get information out to the voters so that they will understand the games school administrators are playing” according to Bruno Behrend, the new leader of the organization.

The Coalition is just a month old but it is already developing the techniques, technology and enthusiasm to support grass roots, anti-tax initiatives. The organization believes that when voters understand the facts surrounding most school tax referenda, they become skeptical and reject the school administrators’ tax-raising schemes.

Tuesday’s results support this notion. Using a volunteer phone bank and other media, the Coalition sent the message that schools do not have a funding problem, they have a spending problem.

By making just 1,000 phone calls, the coalition was able to put “just enough information into just enough voters’ hands to make a difference,” Behrend said.

The members of the coalition have their differences but they are not anti-school or even anti-union. Their complaint is with the voracious appetite public schools have for spending. They believe that too much spending may be as inappropriate as too little spending.

Tuesday’s bad news for educrats doesn’t stop there.

Behrend not only plans to expand the grass roots efforts to defeat referenda at the ballot box, he plans some good, old-fashioned lawsuits.

When the Coalition finds tax advocates are using taxpayers’ money to fund their marketing efforts, he’ll file class action lawsuits to stop what’s already illegal but rarely prosecuted.

As gratifying as these election victories are, they are just skirmishes in a much larger war.

Scott Bludorn, a board member of Northwest Tax Watch believes that District 15, one of the boards defeated on Tuesday, will re-pop the question in the April election. He’s worried that without fundamental reform at the state level, the local school boards will simply continue to ask for tax increases until they wear the volunteers down.

Then there is the tax swap bill making its way through the legislature. Originally styled House Bill 750 in the last General Assembly, it has changed names and houses but is now back under its original moniker.

It’s the same old government growth plan liberals have been trying to sell for a generation. It promises property tax relief in exchange for a whopping increase in income taxes as a more equitable method to finance schools.

In reality, HB 750 would hijack money local school boards collect and send them to Springfield. There, the legislators would take their cut and send something back to the local districts. School business executives support this plan because they realize local referenda are no longer a dependable method to increase revenues; evidently, they would prefer to strong arm the legislature than make their case to local voters.

The debate to determine if local government or state government should control educational monopoly is misplaced. This one shows why all private monopolies are outlawed---high prices, bad service and outlandish riches for the owners.

A more valuable debate would resolve whether government or parents should control how and where education is purchased.

Like Social Security, education is often thought to be an untouchable issue. The combination of an 83% casualty ratio the educrats suffered on Tuesday along with the Democrat’s latest attempt to revivify the dead horse that are tax swaps proves the governing class is out of ideas.

This is a vacuum bold Republicans should fill just as they have over Social Security in Washington. Now, if we could just find a Republican in Illinois with the same fortitude----and vision.

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Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader.