Sen. Karen McConnaughay (R-St. Charles) argued on Tuesday that if Illinois wants true property tax reform, it can't leave out the most important person: the taxpayer.
McConnaughay was responding to Senate Bill 484, an apparently bipartisan bill that would freeze property taxes for four years but lacks a main aspect that Republicans called for: allowing taxpayers to decide via referendum whether they want to vote on changing their property tax rates after the freeze ends.
“When you look at what rolled out today, and when you look at the fact that they’ve taken out the part about the referendum, you've really got to stop and think about this,” McConnaughay said. “If we go forward, and we are going to do something legitimate long term to try to rein in the number of local units of government and bring down taxes, you have to engage the local taxpayer. They have to be part of the conversation, and we need to include them in this agreement.”
McConnaughay also said she didn't like that local governments that are making contributions to police and fire pensions are excluded from the freeze.
“The other thing that I saw in this that is of concern is the exemption of pensions,” she said. “The exemption on pensions begins to dilute the freeze to a point that you have diminishing returns for the taxpayers. We are talking in the state about raising the income taxes, other taxes. We absolutely have to have as a part of this deal an agreement that we need to provide property tax relief at the same time we have these other conversations.”
High property taxes are an enormous burden in Illinois, McConnaughay concluded.
“When you look at the property tax situation in the state of Illinois … we have the [second]-highest property taxes in the entire country,” she said. “That, combined with the fact that we have more units of local government than any other state in the county, puts us into a position where we literally are driving people, businesses and the people that they employ out of the state. Whatever we do here, we must do something to address the exorbitant property tax in the state.”
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