“No more property tax
hikes without taxpayer approval,” preached brother Rauner last year. He pays
property taxes in a lot of states, so maybe he forgot that in Illinois most
property tax hikes are subject to taxpayer approval directly (usually through
bond referenda) or indirectly. This state also has a mechanism, admittedly
little used, by which local voters can express disapproval of local tax hikes
for any purpose after the fact, and set in place their reversal. They’re called
elections. That so few people vote in them suggests that the public outcry
about over-taxation is so much noise.
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2015.
