It’s fitting that the Democratic reversal on school funding occurred on the eve of the Mayweather-McGregor bout.
For the last few years, almost every Democrat in the state—especially the ones running for governor—has called for more progressivity in school funding, generally in the form of a progressive income tax, as opposed to the current flat tax.
As I write this, it’s unclear what’s in the fine print, but the tax credits would amount to about $75 million a year for the next five years, or $375 million total.
The scheme fits right in with the strategy of anti-government Republican ideologues, who argue that the best way to kill government is to starve it. Or as such an ideologue, Grover Norquist, the founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, once put it: “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
And that brings us to the tax increment financing program, the ultimate destination in any story regarding Chicago and taxes. The TIF is in effect a surcharge that gets slapped on your property tax bill. You think it’s going to the schools and parks, but in reality it gets diverted to the mayor’s slush fund.
