By Greg Halbleib
SPRINGFIELD – As promised, Governor Bruce Rauner has issued an amendatory veto of the school funding bill known as Senate Bill 1.
The governor sent the measure back to the General Assembly late this morning. Changes include elimination of what he previously called a bailout of Chicago Public Schools pensions.
“These changes included in my amendatory veto reflect years of hard work by our education reform commission and our ability to overcome our political differences for the good of our young people’s futures,” Gov. Rauner said. “I urge the General Assembly to act quickly to accept these changes and let our students start school on time.”
A release from the governor’s office outlined his changes to the bill:
- Maintains a per-district hold harmless until the 2020-2021 school year, and then moves to a per-pupil hold harmless based on a three-year rolling average of enrollment.
- Removes the minimum funding requirement. While the governor is committed to ensuring that the legislature satisfies its duty to fund schools, the proposed trigger of one percent of the overall adequacy target plus $93 million artificially inflates the minimum funding number and jeopardizes Tier II funding.
- Removes the Chicago block grant from the funding formula.
- Removes both Chicago Public Schools pension considerations from the formula: the normal cost pick-up and the unfunded liability deduction.
- Reintegrates the normal cost pick-up for Chicago Public Schools into the Pension Code where it belongs, and finally begins to treat Chicago like all other districts with regards to the State’s relationship with its teachers’ pensions.
- Eliminates the PTELL and TIF equalized assessed value subsidies that allow districts to continue under-reporting property wealth.
- Removes the escalators throughout the bill that automatically increase costs.
- Retains the floor for the regionalization factor, for the purposes of equity, and adds a cap, for the purposes of adequacy.
The amendatory veto also removes the accounting for future pension cost shifts to districts in the Adequacy Target. This prevents districts from ever fully taking responsibility for the normal costs of their teachers’ pensions.
Governor Rauner again accused the Democratic majority in the legislature of refusing to negotiate, a claim also made of the governor by Democrats. The governor asked lawmakers to swiftly act on the bill.
