Northwest Indiana News: nwitimes.com

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson will lead a march and rally Saturday calling for education funding reform in Illinois.

"We're urging Governor Blagojevich and [his Republican challenger] Judy Topinka to have a debate on the issue of equal and adequate educational funding," Jackson said. "We want to see who has the best plan for equal funding of education."

Illinois public schools are funded largely by local property taxes -- which many people, including Jackson, view as unequally favoring schools where land values are higher.

"The mayor and the governor delight in hoping the Olympics come to Chicago in 2016," Jackson said. "The kids now at age 8 will be 18 by then. Will those kids be in the Olympics or will they be waiters? Are Illinois' youth preparing to be in the Olympics? I submit that all they will be prepared to do under the current system is to observe people from other countries."

Mayor Daley supports Jackson's goal. Just Wednesday, during the presentation of his proposed 2007 budget, the mayor called for state education funding reform.

Saturday's march will begin at noon in Federal Plaza, at Dearborn and Adams streets in downtown Chicago, and will move to the Thompson Center, at Randolph and Clark streets.

The solution Jackson and his supporters are pushing is Illinois House Bill 750, championed by Ralph Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, an Illinois fiscal policy think tank. The bill calls for a reduction in property taxes and an increase in income taxes as well as several other measures to reform the state's taxing system, ultimately creating about $2 billion more for education.

According to Martire, people whose incomes fall into the lower 60 percent will actually pay less in taxes overall, while others above that mark will likely pay more -- although their net tax increase would be small, he said.

"People that claim that this is a too big of a tax have no concept of the Illinois economy," Martire said. "All the attacks against this bill are nonsense. They're not based on any data. But nobody really wants to talk about the facts, they want to talk emotionally about the taxes."

Illinois House Rep. Sandra Pihos, R-Glen Ellyn, a member of the state House's Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, said she would vote against the bill in its current form because she opposes the sales tax increases tied to the bill. But she agreed that action was needed to reform state educational funding.

"We've been talking about this forever, and it's gone nowhere," Pihos said.

"The grass roots outcry for reform is out there, and we can't go too much longer without doing something about it."

She predicted that HB 750 wouldn't pass as it is and said a new version of the bill will probably be introduced in next year's session of the General Assembly.


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