Fact-check: Did Rauner alone delay school funding, cause property tax hikes?
There’s no question Illinois’ record two-year budget impasse took quite a toll.
State government between 2015 and 2017 ran up a backlog of more than $15 billion in IOUs to vendors as Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats who run the Legislature squabbled over how to run the state.
That jeopardized social services ranging from domestic violence shelters to mental health care. Higher education also took a hit, as public universities and community colleges laid off thousands of employees and state tuition assistance for low-income students was thrown into limbo.
Yet a recent ad by J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic challenger to Gov. Bruce Rauner, assigns unilateral blame for the crisis to the Republican seeking re-election. It also highlights a different educationthemed casualty of the budget standoff.
“Want to see what failure looks like?” a narrator asks in the 15-second spot. “Because of Bruce Rauner, Illinois went 736 days without a budget, delaying funding for schools while local governments were forced to raise property taxes. Four years of failure is enough.”
Throughout all the chaos and uncertainty of those days, Rauner and Democrats in the General Assembly managed to carve out a budgetary oasis for school funding. Multibillion-dollar appropriations for K-12 education became law even while lawmakers and the governor could agree on little else.
So what exactly is Pritzker getting at? We decided to check.
Supplemental grants vs. general aid
Pritzker campaign spokesman Jason Rubin pointed to delays that developed during the budget standoff in reimbursements to schools for so-called categorical programs such as special education and transportation.
“Bruce Rauner led Illinois to a 736-day budget crisis, jeopardizing school funding in its entirety and making the state late on critical categorical payments to schools,” Rubin wrote in an email. “Local governments across the state raised property taxes during this time while Rauner’s administration failed in one of its most fundamental obligations, to fund schools on time.”
It’s true that hundreds of millions of categorical grant dollars, which supplement general aid from the state, were paid to schools later than usual.
Data from the Illinois State Board of Education show categorical payment lagged up to nearly seven months in 2017 as the bill backlog ballooned, compared with three months or less in the years leading up to the impasse.
But neither Pritzker’s ad nor the article it cites mention categoricals, suggesting instead that state funding was delayed more broadly. That’s simply not the case.
General state aid, which has comprised more than 70 percent of state funding for schools in recent years, continued to be paid on time throughout the budget impasse.
Tax hikes not the first line of defense
Pritzker’s attempt to draw a connection between the budget impasse and property tax hikes is also questionable.
One key reason is the upsidedown nature of school funding in Illinois. Few states contribute a smaller share of overall school dollars to local districts, rendering them highly dependent on local property tax revenues to make ends meet. So it has become almost routine for many local school boards to annually raise their property tax levies to the amount allowed by law.
Ben Schwarm, deputy director of the Illinois Association of School Boards, said it was more common for districts to resort to tools other than property tax hikes to cope during the budget standoff with any cash flow problems caused by delays in categorial payments.
“It was much more prevalent for them to cut their budgets and lay off staff,” Schwarm said.
Finger-pointing
Finally, there’s the question of blame. There was partisan fingerpointing aplenty during the budget standoff, and Rauner clearly played a significant role. But he didn’t act alone. That’s why we rated a similar claim from Pritzker Mostly False in June.
The impasse dragged on because the governor and Democrats in the General Assembly held very different views on a variety of key issues ranging from the management of state finances to a so-called turnaround agenda Rauner said would lead to a more robust economy but critics saw as a thinly veiled attempt at unionbusting.
Our ruling
Pritzker’s ad says that “because of Bruce Rauner, Illinois went 736 days without a budget, delaying funding for schools while local governments were forced to raise property taxes.”
There are small elements of truth sprinkled through Pritzker’s ad, but he takes significant liberties in seeking to attach sole blame to Rauner for the budget impasse and then link that to school funding delays and property tax hikes. We rate it Mostly False.
“Because of Bruce Rauner, Illinois went 736 days without a budget, delaying funding for schools while local governments were forced to raise property taxes.”
— J.B. Pritzker, Sept. 13, 2018, in a TV ad
The Better Government Association runs PolitiFact Illinois, the local arm of the nationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking enterprise that rates the truthfulness of statements made by governmental leaders and politicians. Ahead of the historic 2018 elections, BGA’s fact-checking service is teaming up weekly with the Sun-Times, in print and online.