A four-year freeze riddled with exceptions won’t help Illinois homeowners. Illinoisans need a long-term freeze on local property tax levies and a cap on the tax burden for individual homeowners.
Progressive tax proposals by Illinois Democrats would punish those in Illinois’ middle class who earn $50,000 or more and make the state even less competitive with its neighbors.
While the Better Government Association has claimed Illinois’ budget contains no fat to trim, a deeper analysis reveals the state has many areas of expensive inefficiency to reform in state and local government costs, the Medicaid program and K-12 education.
New Bureau of Labor Statistics data show Illinois’ black residents have an unemployment rate of 12.7 percent, more than double the state’s overall rate.
Illinois still has 144,000 fewer people working compared with the state’s pre-recession employment level, while surrounding states have all experienced employment growth.
Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.