After 20 minutes of closed door debate, the Cook County Democratic Party announced their endorsement of J.B. Pritzker for governor, following a push by a small group of party Committeemen calling for an open primary with no endorsement.

“I share your concerns about an open primary,” 11th Ward Democratic Committeeman and Cook County Commissioner John Daley said during governor candidate state Sen. Daniel Biss’ open session question and answer period. Biss, like each of the eight other candidates running against Pritzker, had called for no party endorsement.

The stack of 533 bills currently waiting for action on Governor Bruce Rauner’s desk just shrank by 13. The following bills were sent to Rauner on June 13 and, having reached 60 days on the governor’s desk without either a veto or a signature, are automatically passed into law:

Confirmation came from Senate President John Cullerton’s office yesterday morning: The chamber will convene Sunday at 2:00 p.m. to take up Governor Bruce Rauner’s SB1 amendatory veto.

Later in the afternoon, House Speaker Mike Madigan tossed a wet blanket on the annual Governor’s Day at the State Fair, calling for the chamber to convene on the same day. His schedule is as follows:

• 9:00 a.m., Aug. 16: House Approp. Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, Room 114
  


• 11:00 a.m., Aug. 16: House to convene a floor session
  

After House Democrats held a mock-hearing of Rauner’s SB1 amendatory vetoes during a meeting of the House Appropriations-Primary and Secondary Education Committee in Chicago, Sen. Andy Manar (D-Bunker Hill) took to the airwaves for yet another SB1 advocacy presser, this time with Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth (D-Peoria).

Finally, Rauner held two bill signings yesterday: Sen. Pres. Pro Tempore Don Harmon’s (D-Oak Park) SB8, a procurement omnibus, and SB1413 from Sen. Michael Connelly (R-Naperville) which waives birth certificate duplicate fees for those recently released from jail.

Republican State Representatives had some sharp questioning for school superintendents and backers of SB1 Wednesday at a House Primary and Secondary Appropriations Committee subject matter hearing in Chicago. They questioned why Chicago Public Schools officials were not there, and suggested the city was “hiding its wealth” in its TIF districts. While the four hour hearing attracted a full media complement, committee chair and SB1 sponsor Rep. Will Davis (D-Chicago) was not present. Though State Rep. Lisa Hernandez chaired it, State Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago) and other Chicago Democrats nudged school superintendents in their praise of SB1 and the downsides of Governor Bruce Rauner’s amendatory veto.

The House Appropriations-Elementary & Secondary Education Committee will meet today in Chicago for a hearing on shell bill SB1947 or, more specifically, the House Floor Amendment 3 it carries.

On Friday afternoon Governor Bruce Rauner released a list of his most recent appointees by name and position. Below you’ll find a run-down of each of the new players. The same day, Rauner signed 14 bills into law. We’ve scrutinized and summarized the new laws (which range from criminal justice reforms to breastfeeding provisions) and have provided readers a briefing on each.

As news of Governor Bruce Rauner’s amendatory vetoes spread this week, education organizations shared their reactions with The Daily Line.

Michael Chamness, of the Illinois Association of School Administrators: “We would hope that sooner rather than later, either the amendatory veto is overridden, upheld, or there’s a compromise. Because without any of those three things happening we have no mechanism to move funding to schools, and this needs to be resolved as soon as possible. We can support legislation that replaces the outdated broken current formula with the Evidence-Based model and holds all school districts in Illinois harmless. In other words, no red numbers.”


Roger Eddy, of the Illinois Association of School Boards: “When you’re messing with the formula, when you pull one lever another lever gets affected. So we’re still analyzing the effect of all the proposals and the changes that (Rauner) made. Whenever you change any one component of this–whether it relates to the minimum funding level, whether it’s the removal of the block grant, or the the pension considerations--it affects base funding minimums and even the tier status of the school. So you almost have a do a calculation to make sure everyone is in the black. That’s important to us because one of our foundational principles was that there would be no red numbers.”

Jim Reed, of the Illinois Education Association: “SB1 looks very different as sent to the governor versus how it was drafted. So if you take the language the governor has changed in it, it really looks like a different bill. From that perspective, we have really got to look at it as two separate entities, and whether or not it’s substantially the same as it was when going through the General Assembly. At that time, we thought the very important part of the bill was the idea of addressing school funding to be sure we addressed low-income districts and poor performing districts, and bring them up.”

Fundraising saw an uptick this week as campaign season rolled on. While the Senate holds the fate of school funding we’ll continue keeping tabs on A-1 filings every week. Meanwhile, a slate of lawmakers, many Republicans among them, have announced this week they’ll no longer be seeking office, opening up four more seats ahead of the 2018 election. Here’s is a round-up of those filling their coffers and those saying their goodbyes:   

Senate A-1s For The Week

• A-1, Dave Syverson Campaign Committee


• A-1, Citizens for John Cullerton for State Senate


• A-1, Friends of Heather Steans


• A-1, Friends of Toi Hutchinson


• A-1, Friends of Dave Koehler


• A-1, Friends of Mattie Hunter


• A-1, McGuire for Senate


• A-1, Citizens for Pamela J Althoff


• A-1, Friends of Terry Links


• A-1, Julie Morrison for State Senate


• A-1, Friends of Clayborne


• A-1, Bennett for Senate


• A-1, Citizens for Al Riley

Retiree Roundup

• Rep. Robert W. Pritchard (R-70)


• Rep. Barbara Wheeler (R-64)


• House Deputy Republican Leader Patricia R. Bellock (R-47)


• Rep. Bill Mitchell (R-101)

The group joins four other Republicans General Assembly colleagues this year in announcing they will not seek re-election in November. Others who have announced in recent months include: House Assistant Republican Leader Chad Hays (R-104), Sen. Tim Bivins (R-45), Sen. Christine Radogno (R-45), Sen. Kyle McCarter (R-54).

If the Evidence-Based Funding formula in Senate Bill 1 were a Jenga tower, the impact of Governor Bruce Rauner’s vetoes on the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law (PTELL) and Tax Increment Financing (TIF) provisions would be akin to pulling two wooden planks from the base. If the move is cautiously calibrated the tower might remain standing afterward, but even so the game is unlikely to last long.

Without a steady hand, here’s how it could end.

The SB1 formula and the formula in force today have in common a key component in the central per-district dollar calculation: Equalized Assessed Value. In the old formula and new, the district’s EAV–a result of a district’s property values and tax relief–is added to other concerns in order to arrive at the amount of state funds a school district will receive. In our Jenga tower, EAV is not a single plank, but rather a full layer of wooden tranches.

SB1 keeps most of the current TIF language of the School Code, which holds that when a school district’s unique EAV is being composed you take the total property and tax value for the area then remove any spikes in the numbers caused by new developments in the area’s TIF districts (at least until those new developments have paid off their tax debts). The idea is to ensure that the school dollars coming back to a district are based on the current–not future–property tax revenue the district is able to generate.

Rauner’s veto, however, adds the TIF spikes into a district’s EAV. Meanwhile, the higher a district’s EAV, the fewer funds it receives from the state. Using Chicago as an example, Bobby Otter of the Center for Budget and Tax Accountability explains the concept:

“Chicago has about $6.5 billion in EAV TIF districts. That doesn’t show up under EVA, either real or used, in any General State Aid data. That’s not in there. So if you’re going to add TIFs back in, you’re adding $6.5 billion in EVA into the model. Chicago has an EVA of around $65 billion, and if you add in TIFs you get over $70 billion, but CPS can’t access any of that additional money,” he said.  

A Full List of TIF Districts By County

Aside from inflating the EAV, this move destabilizes the tower in other ways. The Evidence-Based Funding formula takes some of the volatility out of state aid shortfalls in areas where property values have fallen. It does so by creating a new Adjusted EAV, which is a rolling three-year average EAV. This Adjusted EAV is also multiplied by the local tax rate to get a clearer picture of real receipts in the area, the product of which is then used to determine school district’s local tax capacity and school adequacy targets through separate formulas.

Removing PTELLs

Without the inclusion of other counterbalancing economic forces, a two-year TIF spike, while temporarily profitable for an out-of-town developer, could lower state funding to an already-struggling school. Rauner doesn’t include any such counterbalances in his TIF vetoes. Instead, he removes the PTELL limitation plank.

PTELLs are treated much the same as TIFs in the current School Code in that they’re carefully accounted for during the EAV construction process to ensure state dollars reflect actual property values instead of inflation rates.

But Otter said the current model may no longer fit the times. “Originally, the intention of PTELL was to help homeowners in some areas, because we are so reliant on property taxes to fund education in the state it was a way to slow down property taxes on a year to year basis. But the calculus has kind of changed now with inflation being so low.”

SB1 tries to put some space between property tax pressures of low-income districts and the normal costs of inflation by creating a PTELL EAV, which Rauner vetoed. This value is found by taking the normal EAV, multiplying it by any yearly Consumer Price Index increase, then adding or subtracting the EAV of any new properties as they’ve come and gone over the year.

A Map of PTELL Counties

The PTELL EAV plays the same role in the same calculations as SB1’s new Adjusted EAV, affecting just as many layers of numbers across the board. And by striking its protections from the bill, Rauner risks many of the same financial imbalances as he does with his TIF veto.

“It’s an interesting move because a lot of the suburbs are going to be affected by this. Most of the suburbs have PTELL districts. What it’s going to do is raise the EAV of a number of these districts, especially in the Chicago area,” Otter said.

A List of PTELL Districts by County

If Rauner aims to keep the Evidence-Based Funding formula balanced, he may be in luck. Many of the same lawmakers currently negotiating the fate of SB1 post-veto were serving together in 2014 on the Senate Education Funding Advisory Committee, and even as negotiators Sens. Jason Barickman and Andy Manar now struggle to hash out a Rauner-friendly agreement this year, the two concluded together with other members in their final report that PTELL funding needed a close examination.

In a presser after Rauner’s vetoes, Manar reserved his strongest language for criticism of the two vetoes, calling the move a “a scalpel right at the heart of a small number of school districts, many of which are least funded in the state with the highest rates of poverty and the highest property tax rates. That is deliberate... and only people with knowledge and know-how would be afforded the ability to do that.”

Although the PTELL and TIF exemptions affect Cook and the collar counties as much as downstate, a Democratic Senate analysis estimated as many as 60 districts to be affected by these changes. As a result, the issue stretches across party lines and is likely to become the first major flashpoint in the latest chapter of negotiations.

In a total of 36 amendatory vetoes, Governor Bruce Rauner unleashed a competing plan for Democrats and Republican negotiators to chew on through the coming week. Substantive vetoes ranged from relocation of Chicago Public School pension funding to the recalculation of teacher salaries. The Daily Line gathered the changes in a rundown for readers here.