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Ted Dabrowski cuts through the BS and takes on the biggest drain on property taxes
By Ray Hanania
Ted Dabrowski is one of four candidates running for the Republican nomination for Illinois Governor in the March 17 Republican primary election. But he is the only one who is speaking to the real challenges of fast-rising property taxes that voters are facing.
Dabrowski points out what everyone acknowledges: that Illinois has one of the worst taxing systems in the country. It needs to be changed and addressed.
He has pointed to the problem with the excessive presence of outrageously high-salaried superintendents and administrators at our high schools. Florida, he points out, has under 80 school districts while Illinois has more than 8o0 school districts. The result is that the administrative costs are 10 times higher in Illinois than in Florida, with many high school superintendents being paid outrageous and unjustified salary levels in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Consolidating the districts means consolidating the army of superintendents and administrators, and thereby reducing the costs. After all, schools account for between 60 and 70 percent of our property taxes. Reducing administrative costs — not cutting teacher salaries — would dramatically reduce the burden on taxpayers.
“The big problem is that what people don’t realize is that two-thirds, or 60 percent to 70 percent of people’s property tax bills are spent on education. When you start looking at that, you start to realize that one should realize where the problem is,” Dabrowski said.
“We have the most units of local government in the country. Illinois, for example, has 850 school districts. Now, compare that with Florida, which has just 74. So when you have 850 school districts, you have to realize that you’re gonna have a superintendent in every district. In many of them, you’re gonna have an assistant superintendent. You’re going to have a legal person, a bookkeeper, and so these administrative district offices are huge. They are duplicative in many cases because you could unite a lot of these districts into one and save taxpayers lots of money.”
Dabrowski added, “Once you get into this, you see how much we pay these people. It’s crazy. The costs are so removed from what everyday Illinoisans make. There is a big opportunity to streamline education. And you can probably deliver better services if they are streamlined.”
Dabrowski says the worst part is that there is no real accountability for the schools, which often go under the radar screen of public scrutiny. Most voters focus on the politics of local governments, but don’t look at the politics of the schools. Both are driven by the same focus on power, clout, and political power, rather than on the services they are supposed to provide, he acknowledged.
“There is no accountability. That’s why we’re making such a big deal about this, because there’s a lack of accounta- accountability in two fronts. One is how much we’re paying people, just, it’s just executive pay that’s so out of reach from what, uh, everyday people make. But the second is there’s no accountability, you know, on, on whether our kids read or not, and that’s, that’s the big issue. Uh, you know, our system is destroying literacy. You take the, you take the highest paid superintendent, his name is Kevin Nohelty from Dalton. You know, his total comp is 588,000, and yet only 19 percent of kids read at grade level in his district,” Dabrowski said.
“That’s precisely the problem that people don’t know, but this is what I call legal corruption. This is patronage. And the way you get patronage done legally is that you create as many units of government as you can that then create [patronage] jobs. And all these are, of course, public sector jobs, public union jobs. So this is where the unions get all their power, and this is why you have 850 superintendents, and you have so many of them making so much money.”
The Superintendent of Consolidated High School District 230, Robert Nolting, earns about $300,000 and is set to receive a pay increase of $50,000 more. I am not saying Nolting is a bad person. Why are taxpayers paying so much money for that position? Many people see those levels of salaries to be outrageous, especially when reading proficiency levels should be so much higher.
“When you look at Florida with only 74 school districts, well, they’re only gonna have 74 superintendents, and so, you know, I give the example of where I live in the New Trier School District a well-known school district. So, inside the high school district boundaries are six feeder elementary districts. They can be combined into one unit district and have one superintendent. Instead, we’ve got seven superintendents. They all make over $300,000, and they all have a big staff to help them.”
Dabrowski said that is one aspect of taxes that must be addressed and resolved to reduce the burden and increase efficiency and services.
“We have no choice. We have to make it more affordable here because if not, you know, we’re already shrinking in population. Under Governor Pritzker, we’ve already lost 100,000 in population. We’ve seen the businesses leave. If we don’t fix things, it’s gonna keep spiraling. Getting these costs down is one necessary step. I mean if we don’t have kids who can read, well, we can’t have a strong republic. We can’t have a workforce. We’re going to have more dependency. We’re going to have more crime. So we have to go crazy about getting our kids to read,” Dabrowski argued.
“Illinois should be in the top five states for job creation, for economic growth, for wage growth, for education. But we’re in the bottom five states. If you look at all the stats, we’re in the bottom five states for those things. We really have to change things to get there. Under Governor Pritzker, we’ve been at the bottom, and we’re not improving. It’s getting worse.”
The tax problems go beyond the schools.
“If you look at gas taxes, Governor Pritzker doubled the motor fuel tax, and we now have the third-highest gas taxes in the country. We have the highest cell phone taxes, and with the recent CTA bailout of the Chicago Transit Authority. Chicago is now paying the highest sales tax in the country. So we’re getting just getting beat up, and this is why people are being squeezed out. So this is our big opportunity to really roll back these costs. Taxes must make sense relative to everyday Illinoisans who pay for those costs, and today they don’t make sense,” Dabrowski emphasized.
Ted Dabrowski is the former president of Wirepoints, where he helped build an Illinois-centric policy research and commentary brand based on straight talk, hard data and fiscal realism. Ted previously worked from 2011 to 2017 at the Illinois Policy Institute, where he served as Spokesman and Vice President of Policy.
Prior to that, Ted spent more than 15 years building out and managing divisions of Citibank’s franchises in the developing, high-growth markets of Mexico and Poland.
Ted’s inspiration to fix Illinois comes from the experiences of his father and mother, who immigrated to Chicago from Poland and Ecuador in pursuit of the American Dream.
Ted and his wife, Ellen, live in Wilmette and are parents to three daughters and a son.
For more information on Ted Dabrowski, visit his website at www.tedforillinois.com.
Read Ray Hanania’s endorsement of Ted Dabrowski for Illinois Governor by clicking this link.
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Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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