Election-year plan trades revenue stream for immediate cash
By Don Castella, Chairman: Vernon Township Republican Central Committee
Since its 1974 inception, the Illinois State Lottery has provided gambling revenues of about $13 Billion to the Illinois Common School Fund (K-12) (NASPL data). Currently, the Illinois Lottery generates more than $600 Million net annually for Illinois schools. Under this Blagojevich proposal the Illinois Lottery would be sold or leased and its education revenue stream would vanish entirely.
In a May 23 news release, the Blagojevich administration stated: "Under this proposal, the Illinois Lottery would either enter into a long-term lease with a private entity or conduct an Initial Public Offering that would generate approximately $10 billion in proceeds." Under terms of his proposal, "...the lease would provide $4 billion towards a new $6 billion funding plan for schools over the next four years and guarantee a $650 million annuity to the Common School Fund until Fiscal Year 2025."
Ostensibly, the plan is the result of a political deal struck between the governor and potential third-party challenger State Senator Rev. James Meeks. Rev Meeks has apparently agreed not to run for governor in return for the governor concocting a deal that would throw more money at the broken illinois K-12 school system for a while, but less money in the long run. This proposal is just another plan by the governor to spend future revenues today, further mortgaging the future of Illinois children and pushing Illinois toward a looming fiscal crisis in school funding.
Rather than address structural and spending problems in Illinois bloated, inefficient, and corrupt Big Education system, this plan creates new spending initiatives and increments programs that will require additional revenue sources after the current governor leaves office, conveniently shifting the political burden for real reform and fiscal solutions to future administrations and IL General Assemblies. While the plan proposes a few neeeded reforms, it furthers the tacit assumption that only more money can bail out failing school systems. If that assumption were true, the growth in Illinois per-pupil K-12 spending witnessed already should have yielded more positive results.
What many Illinois school districts sorely need is to face reality and think outside the boxes they have constructed. In some cases, particularly rural and downstate, major reforms or restructuring may well be needed to address education funding problems. While school choice and voucher proposals have languished due to lack of support in these same rural areas, urban school students would benefit greatly from increased school competition.
Once again we witness Rod Blagojevich proposing a major change in Illinois fiscal policy without significant public debate. That is, unless you call a backroom powow with an inconvenient potential challenger public debate. One wonders why the legislature was not afforded an opportunity to discuss this plan's merits until the Fall Veto Session. Readers will recall that Senator Meeks was the State Senate's leading proponent for the so-called HB 750 'tax-swap', which
failed again last summer.
One must ask how this proposal would address the huge unfunded education pension liability that this and past administrations have precipitated. Inquiring minds also wonder if this proposal merely sets up Illinois for an impending fiscal criis that only a tax-swap can address. Such proposals which seek to further short-change collar-county schools and taxpayers, have not gained widespread support. Usually these tax-swap proposals include sizable increases in corporate taxes, service taxes, and other new taxes tied to token decreases in property taxes. Tax increases of this magnitude would ensure that Illinois remains near the bottom of all states in job creation, business, and population growth
Clearly, Governor Blagojevich is trying to play both sides of the political street... by proposing to raise education spending during an election year, while supposedly holding the line on tax increases. The Governor is gambling with our childrens' futures, and that is one Lottery ticket Illinois voters should not buy.
