Voters reject school facility sales tax hikes in 11 counties

Counties across Illinois reject school facility sales tax hikes.

According to the Tax Foundation, Illinois residents already pay the second-highest property tax rates in the country. In most areas, the biggest beneficiary of high property taxes are the local school districts. Despite this, an increasing number of school districts across the state have decided to seek new forms of tax revenues via the County School Facility Occupation Tax Law, also commonly referred to as the school facility sales tax.

The law creating this new tax first went into effect in October 2007 and was amended in 2011. It allows school districts to place a referendum on the ballot to increase the county sales tax rate up to 1 percent to raise money for use on capital projects.

To place school facility sales tax question before voters:

• School boards must pass a resolution.
• Boards representing 51 percent of a county’s student population must approve placing the referendum on the ballot.
• Boards may propose to increase the county sales tax by up to 1 percent, in quarter percentage point increments.

If the referendum is successful (simple majority of voters):

• Sales tax revenues are distributed to school districts on a per student basis.
• Funds may go to pay-as-you-go capital projects, to pay the costs of newly issued capital project bonds or retire existing debt issued for capital purposes.

A common argument in favor of the sales tax referenda is it will allow school districts to reduce or avoid property tax hikes, or fix crumbling infrastructure.

But rarely do property tax levies go down after a successful sales tax referendum, and public school budgets are at all-time highs across the state.

In the past, the referenda haven’’t been very successful. In the November 2012 elections, all four school facilities sales tax referenda failed.

The 17 Illinois counties that voted on a countywide sales tax for school facilities referenda in April were: Boone, Christian, Crawford, Douglas, Fulton, Henry, LaSalle, Lee, Livingston, Jersey, Marshall, Mercer, Ogle, Randolph, Tazewell, Whiteside and Woodford.

The referenda passed six times and failed 11 times. Overall the school facilities sales tax referenda have appeared on county ballots 59 times in Illinois since 2008, but have only passed 17 times, or 29 percent of the time.

Here’s a look at the unofficial results from the April 9 elections.

The next chance for school boards to place a school facility sales tax referendum on the ballot is November 2014.