In State Rep. Jack Franks’ press release announcing his candidacy for McHenry County Board Chairman he didn’t say he was going to cut McHenry County taxes.
He just talked about fighting against tax hikes.
Of course, that’s the same press release that says, “he will not seek re-election to the General Assembly.”
No evidence of that yet.
Indeed, in an interview by Pete Gonigam on the same day that the press release was issued, Franks gave to this only reporter in the Democratic caucus room the following information:
“Franks qualified that saying he’d give up the Rep. race if the Committee can pick another candidate who’s both ‘electable’ and holds a political outlook consistent with his own.”
So far Franks hasn’t pulled out of the race.
Has Jack Franks filed a Withdrawal of Candidacy statement yet?
Check whether Franks has filed the form yet, by clicking here.
With McHenry County being the 29th highest property taxed county (out of over 3,000) in the USA, one would hope that candidates for County Board would be suggesting ways to cut taxes, rather than just hold them constant.
But, what if McHenry County Board candidates wanted to cut real estate taxes.
How might they do it.
I see two ways.
Eliminate the Valley Hi Nursing Home Levy.
Valley Hi Nursing Home fund’s cash on hand from FY 2006 through FY 2016 (projected).
The balance in the bank in this independent fund exceeded $41 million at the beginning of this month.
The reason is that previous McHenry County Boards pulled money out of our pockets that they should not have.
The nursing home has quite a good manager in Administrator Thomas Annarella.
He runs his operation with deficits that are in the million dollar range.
It is my opinion that it would take decades to spend down the money.
So, why not just abolish the levy?
The answer comes from those with apocalyptic visions of the Federal and state governments not paying for care.
They think upwards of two years’ expenditures need to be held in reserve.
Even if one accepts their pessimistic view of future reimbursements of Medicaid and Medicare patients, I seen about $20 million in surplus.
What if the worst happens and the surplus disappears?
Then another referendum could be held.
Let people of the future make the decision.
Take the RTA Sales Tax and use it to replace real estate taxes used to support the Sheriff’s Department.
In an April analysis, I found the RTA estimates the 2016 collection for McHenry County will be $10.4 million.
The amount of property taxes spent for the Sheriff’s Department is $10.8 million.
So, if the County Board wanted to spend the RTA sales tax to cut real estate taxes, rather than widen a Randall Road with stagnant traffic counts, we could all have a lower tax bill.
While thus far Jack Franks has made no commitment to cut taxes, he still has time to do so.
Jack Franks has been part of plenty of tax hiking laws.
He has been part of the worst type of tax hiking law.
Legislative pension benefit hikes.
Why is that the worse?
First, underfunded pensions are the single largest fiscal problem in the state of Illinois.
Second, one sentence added to the Illinois state constitution on December 15, 1970 states that retiree benefits (pensions and retiree healthcare) are contractual and cannot be diminished or impaired.
Here is the sentence.
Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State,
any unit of local government or school district,
or any agency or instrumentality thereof,
shall be an enforceable contractual relationship,
the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.
Third, many of the benefit hikes were underfunded.
Fourth, most of the pensions systems at the time of the hikes were underfunded.
Furthermore, state budgets, which are voted on by State Representatives such as Jack Franks, were not truly balanced, allowing for more generous pay hikes, which results in larger pensions, which worsens the above mentioned problems.
And we could go on and on, but that’s a good overview of how Jack Franks’ votes on pension legislation has resulted in further destablizing the pension systems, worsening the pension problems, and will result in hiked taxes, cut benefits, or some type of restructuring.
The Illinois Pension Scam.
The biggest fiscal problem in the State of Illinois.