Property Tax Freeze Vote More About Politics Than Policy

The Illinois House of Representatives recently took up a monumental public policy issue, but didn't really act on the measure in a manner befitting a monumental public policy issue.

All is forgiven if you are confused!

Sometimes a hot ticket item is voted on for political purposes instead of on its merits. That was the case with the May 15 vote on a bill to freeze residential and commercial property taxes.

HB 695 (Representative Franks, D-Woodstock) was amended to expand the existing property tax cap law (PTELL) to include every taxing district in the state that is reliant on property taxes. Under current law, only non-home rule taxing districts are subject to tax caps, and only if the taxing district imposes the cap on itself or is located within a county that has adopted tax caps.

The current law "caps" property taxes by limiting the extension rate to the lesser of 5 percent or inflation. This allows taxing districts to, at a minimum, automatically collect inflationary increases to keep up with the rising cost of goods and services.

This would change under HB 695. If enacted into law, the bill would cap the extension limitation of every taxing district in the state (including Chicago) at 0 percent. The only way to increase the extension limitation would be to get the approval of voters via referendum. Getting such approval is not always an easy thing to do.

The House opted to vote on the bill for two reasons, neither of which had anything to do with passing it.

First and foremost, the Democrats wanted to embarrass Governor Rauner with a roll call that demonstrated weak support for the bill. Only 37 votes were cast in support, and none of them were from Republicans. The Governor's Office urged the Republicans to vote "present" as a way to protest the theatrical nature of the vote and to underscore that the bill was not the Governor's exact property tax freeze proposal.

Secondly, the vote created an opportunity for the House Democrats to accuse the Republicans of not supporting property tax relief. It didn't take very long for the first negative mailer to hit following the vote. Most of the Democratic targets made sure to vote in favor of the bill.

Procedurally, the vote was only to adopt the amendment onto the bill. This only required a simple majority. Actually passing the bill over to the Senate would require a supermajority of 71 votes because the bill preempts home rule powers. There simply isn't enough support for HB 695 to attain this threshold.

The Governor filed his own property tax freeze proposal late last week. It remains to be seen if the General Assembly will hold a vote on the legislation next week. There may be plenty of time to consider the Governor's bill because all signs point to an overtime session.