Dear Friends,

Election Interference Web Site Launched

Citizens for Reasonable And Fair Taxes (C.R.A.F.T.)
announces the launch of
ilelectioninterference.org.

The web site's purposes are:

- provide easy access to Illinois State law regarding spending taxpayer
dollars on political activities,

- track actions by law enforcement agencies regarding the Illinois
Election Interference statute and the Attorney General's Model Ethics
Ordinance,

- inform taxpayers of certain school district money and employee time
spent on things other than educating the children,

- invite taxpayers to decide how they feel about these
uses of their tax dollars, and to submit examples of
tax dollars being used to get more tax dollars.

Illinois Election Interference

How do you feel about your tax dollars being used to get more of your tax dollars? Many school districts in Illinois are doing just that. Are Illinois' Election Interference statute or the Illinois Attorney General's Model Ethics Ordinance being violated? Read these pages for specific examples, and decide for yourself.

OUTLINE

1. What is election interference?

2. Local State's Attorneys' views of the March 16, 2004, primary election

3. Specific school district examples

4. Further use of taxpayer dollars to obtain more taxpayer dollars

5. Attempts to obtain tax dollars for schools without referendum

6. List of school districts asking for higher taxes on November 2, 2004

What is election interference? Illinois statutes prohibit the use of public funds (i.e. taxpayer dollars) to promote votes for or against a candidate or proposition. The statutes also prohibit public (government) employees from engaging in prohibited political activities on compensated time, requiring other public employees to do so, or using public resources in connection with prohibited political activity. Links to specific citations and text of the statutes can be found at the bottom of this page.

Local State's Attorneys' views of the March 16, 2004, primary election. Leading up to the March 16, 2004, primary election, several Illinois school districts appeared to be using public resources to urge Yes votes on tax increase referenda -- questionably balanced information on school web sites, in school newsletters, and sent home with the children; a superintendent walking door-to-door stumping for Yes votes; and even a district producing a pro-tax increase referendum video and showing it to all students during class time.

The Lake County State's Attorney has taken a stand, and pointed out specific examples of what constitutes election interference. The McHenry County State's Attorney didn't see similar information in the same light when presented with similar complaints from several private citizens. Click here for more information on how the Lake and McHenry County State's Attorneys have handled complaints of election interference, including letters from the offices of both counties State's Attorneys.

Specific school district examples. Click on these links to see examples of some Illinois school districts appearing to use public resources to urge Yes votes on tax increase referenda. After reading the examples, and the Election Interference statute and Model Ethics Ordinance, decide for yourself if these examples violate the statute or the Ordinance. Decide for yourself if this is how you want your school district to use your tax dollars.

Cary District 26 school newsletters containing phrases similar to what the Lake County SA says makes them advocacy pieces

Harrison (Wonder Lake) District 36 school web pages containing phrases that make the pages advocacy pieces

Huntley District 158 five minute video shown to all students at Huntley High School

Superintendents of all 18 school districts in McHenry County lobbying legislators to increase taxes for schools

Further use of taxpayer dollars to obtain more taxpayer dollars. Not all cases of using taxpayer money to get more taxpayer money are covered by Illinois Election Interference statutes. In Wilmette District 39, the school board is using taxpayer dollars to pay attorneys to fight taxpayer property assessment appeals. The Chicago Sun-Times' Mary Laney documents this use of taxpayer dollars:

Huge school bureaucracy cheats taxpayers, students
BY MARY LANEY, Chicago Sun Times, August 9, 2004

Questioning your property taxes? Wondering why they are continuously going up and at such steep jumps? Look no further than the bureaucracy that surrounds you.

It's true that taxes are necessary to have an orderly society and to pay for a government to function and keep that order. But when government grows to the point that it is creating jobs for friends and relatives, when it grows to the point that it's even duplicating and triplicating jobs, the ensuing taxes are no longer necessary payments, they're like usury. And we are all the poorer for it.

There is no place that this is more pronounced than in Illinois' educational bureaucracy. Jobs upon high-paying jobs upon higher-paying jobs are evident in school districts throughout the state.

And who pays for these bureaucratic fiefdoms? Property owners and taxpayers: You.

Illinois school budgets are based on property taxes, which means you pay for all of them. On top of paying for teachers' and principals' salaries, you also pay for district bureaucrats -- their health benefits, life insurance, pensions, educational junkets and expenses. What's left is passed on to the students.

The problem is not in paying for the teachers and the principals and in-school employees. The problem is in paying for the bureaucrats.

In the state of Illinois, we now have 383 elementary school districts, 101 high school districts, 407 unit districts and two non-operating unit districts.

That's just too many school districts for Illinois.

In the suburb of Highland Park, there are six separate school districts -- each with its own superintendent, assistant superintendent, secretaries and staff members. Evanston has two separate school districts: one for its elementary and middle schools, the other for its high school. Each of those school districts is a separate taxing body. And each of those school districts has its own superintendent, assistant superintendent, secretarial pool, public spokesman and sizeable staff.

Is this the right way to handle education? No.

Is all this bureaucracy necessary? No.

Compare Illinois' system of multiple school districts and staffs for relatively small suburban areas with the Catholic Archdiocese school system. It is the largest non-public school system in the nation with roughly 112,000 students.

The archdiocese runs all of its 263 schools -- elementary through high school -- in Cook and Lake counties with one superintendent, a staff of 32 and eight support staff. This system is roughly a third the size of Chicago's, yet it operates its system successfully without a huge bureaucracy. On top of that, rather than fighting a dropout problem, the attendance rate is 97 percent in elementary schools and 95 percent in secondary schools, and 93 percent of the high school graduates go on to college.

The suburbs and exurbs and towns throughout Illinois have multiple school districts, duplicating the work that a single district unit could do, and they still don't match the results of the archdiocese.

Too many chiefs? You bet.

How did this happen? Bureaucracy, like a weed, grows if unchecked and unquestioned by the people.

When you wind up in an area with multiple school districts -- each a separate taxing body -- you know you're in a deep bureaucracy. You're paying for the bureaucrats rather than the education of the students. Your money is going for their salaries and benefits and pensions.

Ah, the pensions.

You've seen how they work. Before retiring, superintendents are allowed to -- and have -- given themselves hefty pay raises so their pensions will expand through their golden years. You and your taxes pay for those pensions, for hundreds of superintendents.

Chicago operates all of its schools as a single Unit District, with Arne Duncan as its CEO. He's doing a stellar job, but he's burdened by the huge bureaucracy under him. According to public records, Chicago has 26,548 teachers in its schools and 18,529 other employees -- and of that number 4,510 are not even working in schools. Some of that fat just has to be cut so the money can go to the students.

If you're challenging your property taxes, think about taking another action. Start collecting signatures and follow the process to get referendums on the ballots to create single unit school districts and to demand a reasonable number of staff.

Think of all the extra money for the students. Think of how many of your hard-earned property tax dollars would be saved or passed directly to classrooms.

Think about the books that could be bought, the librarians who could be hired, the music classes that could be returned to schools, along with the art classes and drama classes and athletic programs that have been cut because of budget problems.

They call the school problems budgetary. They're actually bureaucratic.

It's up to you to demand that bureaucracy be pruned -- for Illinois' students and the very future of this state.


It's the bureaucrats -- not the budgets -- that hurt schools
BY MARY LANEY, Chicago Sun Times, August 23, 2004

LINK

Fair warning: This is going to frost you. If you own a home, or property, or a business, it's going to make your blood boil. If you're on medication, make certain you've taken it before you read further because what I'm about to tell you can raise your blood pressure.

Your property taxes are being spent to hire lawyers to oppose you.

That's right. Now let me explain just what is going on.

You pay your property taxes to support schools and other municipal and county facilities. And when your property taxes go way up, you appeal them to the Cook County Board of Review. If you're unsuccessful with the Board of Review, you have 30 days to appeal them to the Property Tax Appeal Board. But here's what is going to get you fired up. School boards are hiring lawyers to fight your appeals. Without you knowing it, they're voting to use your tax dollars to pay for lawyers who fight against your getting any relief from your high property taxes.

Consider what is happening in north suburban Wilmette. School District 39's Board of Education, under Supt. Max McGee, has voted to hire attorneys to go in and fight tax reductions that homeowners have appealed to get. They're hiring attorneys -- at the expense of Wilmette property owners -- to fight tax reductions requested by those very taxpayers. But that's not all. Wilmette Board of Education President Al Dolinko and board member Greg Polan filed to have their own tax burdens lightened on their homes while hiring attorneys to fight tax appeals of their neighbors.

See what I mean about this making your blood boil?

It's one thing for a board to vote to spend money on classrooms and teachers and buses and security and special education and sports teams, but it's a true overreach to hire attorneys to deny property owners relief from the property taxes they're paying to support education.

The public school bureaucracy has become extremely adept at spending your money to get more of your money so they can spend more money to get more money. Lobbyists are paid to go to Springfield to wine and dine senators and representatives at taxpayers' expense.

Superintendents and assistants get high salaries and car allowances and expenses and paid junkets, all at your expense.

This education bureaucracy has formed front group after front group in an effort to fool legislators into thinking there is a ground swell of support to raise your taxes and pay a bunch more money for school superintendents, assistant superintendents, administrators and assistant administrators. But it's not a budget problem in schools; it's a bureaucratic problem.

At the same time these bureaucrats fight to keep your property taxes high, they're turning down federal money from Washington for fear they'll have to account for just how well they're teaching the students and how well the students are doing on tests.

Take Wilmette School District 39. How well is it teaching the students? How well did it do in the six years from 1994 to 2000? No one knows. The District 39 Board of Education says it lost the data. It says the data isn't available. Parents have asked McGee to re-create the data, but he apparently hasn't had the time.

McGee is paid $200,670 a year as superintendent of kindergarten through eighth-grade schools in Wilmette. He travels to Springfield regularly. He traveled to Europe to bicycle. Surely he should have the time to reconstruct the test scores to show Wilmette how well -- or how poorly -- their students have been doing over the past several years.

Those test scores ought to be made public before the board hires another attorney to block yet another property tax appeal. There must be a way to reconstruct six years of test scores.

It's not just Wilmette. The bureaucracy in education is growing throughout Cook County. School boards in Evanston -- the town with exorbitant taxes -- are also hiring attorneys to fight property tax appeals.

Do we really need superintendents and assistant superintendents paid in the six figures? Could that money be better spent on more teachers, books and tutors? You bet it could.

If your blood is boiling and you're angry about what's happening, don't settle for the status quo, do something about it. Demand that the state finally fund schools correctly, cut down on multiple school districts, cut the fat in the bureaucracy, stop superintendents from increasing their salaries for fat pensions. Tell the state to fund schools properly, set up single-unit districts with one superintendent and reasonable staffs. Demand that your hard-earned tax dollars and property taxes not be used to pit lawyers against you, but be put where it belongs.

Put the money toward the students.

Copyright © The Sun-Times Company


Attempts to obtain tax dollars for schools without referendum. With voters starting to wake up and decide they are taxed enough, many are voting NO when asked to raise their own taxes. To combat this trend, politicians, special interest funded groups, and government "public" school officials and sympathizers are designing ways to get the money out of taxpayers WITHOUT their approval. The latest effort is HB750, basically a $4.7 billion tax increase. Click here to see how HB750 circumvents the referendum process to get more of your money.

Following is a list of school districts that are asking for more money through property tax increases in the November 2, 2004, general election. Links to the official school web sites are provided -- monitor these for use of public resource to urge yes votes on their tax increase referenda! Also included are links to the well-funded (by teacher unions and public school vendors -- financial analysts, construction firms, architects, law firms) referendum support groups. * indicates the district just had one defeated in March.

- Harvard D50*

- Huntley D158*

- B.E.S.T.

- McHenry D15*

- R.O.A.R.

- Harrison D36* (Wonder Lake)

- Johnsburg D12 (April, 2005)

- Barrington D220

- Grayslake D46*

- Big Hollow D38*

- Palatine D15 (and April, 2005, if November fails)

- East Maine D63* (near NW suburbs)

- Des Plaines D62

- Lake Forest D115 (April, 2005)

- Kaneland D302

- Geneva D304

- Belvidere D100* (April, 2005)

- Thornton Township HS D205

- Alsip D126

- Orland D135 (April, 2005)

- Ridgeland D122

Specific Election Interference Citations

"No public funds shall be used to urge any elector to vote for or against any candidate or proposition, or be appropriated for political or campaign purposes to any candidate or political organization."

Complete text of the Election Interference statute can be found in (10 ILCS 5/9-25.1) Sec. 9-25.1(b) (toward the bottom).

The Illinois General Assembly recently enacted a comprehensive revision of State ethics laws intended to ensure that public officers and employees adhere to the highest ethical standards. Under the provisions of the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act (enacted by Public Acts 93-615 and 93-617), all units of local government and school districts are required -- by May 19, 2004, to adopt regulations governing political activities, and the solicitation and acceptance of gifts of public officers and employees that are "no less restrictive" than those contained in that Act.

For more information on these web pages or to submit examples of election interference in your district, contact Citizens for Reasonable and Fair Taxes.

CRAFT believes public school funds or resources should *not* be used to educate the public on political issues.

Legislative Alert!
Stop HB0750 now!

View letter to Governor Blagojevich

The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability (CTBA) is a front organization for the teacher's unions and public sector unions in Illinois. Its leader, Ralph Martire, has paraded around Illinois promoting sweeping tax increases under the cynical guise of promoting "fair taxation". The latest vehicle of their assault is HB0750, a plan to impose almost $5 billion in new taxes.

Make no mistake. HB0750 is not about helping the working poor who will be saddled with new service taxes, fewer jobs, and reduced income. HB0750 is about forcing taxpayers to continually increase funding to Illinois' inefficient public school system.

The best arguments against Ralph Martire's plan come from Ralph Martire. Please visit the CTBA's website with a healthy dose of skepticism. A summary of HB0750 is located on the CTBA website.

We take a look at some of the folly in this horrible proposal point-by-point using their summary as a guide here.

NOTICE: All original material on these pages Copyright 2004 CRAFT All Rights Reserved

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