Illinois has a new regional transit funding package at the same time Indiana Governor Mike Braun has refused to raise sales taxes or tollway fees to help lure the Chicago Bears to Hammond. Indiana officials are being criticized for considering tax increases, while Illinois moved forward with its own package raising sales taxes across Chicago and the five collar counties, along with a roughly 45-cent increase in passenger tolls and a 30 percent increase in commercial tolls.
To discuss the plan, Proft was joined by Paul Vallas, senior policy adviser at the Illinois Policy Institute, a weekly contributor to the Chicago Contrarian, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools and past Chicago mayoral candidate. Vallas said the regional transit package will cost taxpayers roughly 1.5 billion dollars a year, with tolls rising 57 percent and then increasing automatically every two years without requiring a further vote, a structure he compared to the state’s motor fuel tax. He said the package brings the total number of tax and fee increases under Pritzker to 66, generating roughly 9 billion dollars annually in additional state and transit revenue, on top of what he said is another 9 billion dollars a year in additional property taxes since Pritzker took office, for a combined total he put at 18 billion dollars annually.
Vallas also criticized the state’s evidence-based school funding formula, calling it a mechanism written largely by education lobbyists and teachers unions to direct additional money toward schools he described as losing enrollment and underperforming, while arguing that a state scholarship program for low-income families seeking alternatives to public schools has been allowed to lapse.
The conversation turned to Bally’s Chicago casino project, which Vallas said has run into financial difficulty tied to a struggling Las Vegas development, a recent credit downgrade, and an underperforming temporary casino location, following a letter from a group of Chicago aldermen accusing the company of using a video gambling approval dispute to slow construction while it seeks other financing options. Vallas said he considers the original casino deal to have been poorly structured from the outset, noting that it was pitched in part as a funding source for the city’s firefighters pension fund, which he said remains funded at roughly 20 percent.
Vallas also discussed Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed tax on businesses based on employee headcount, framed by the administration as a tax targeting corporate interests, arguing that the cost would ultimately be passed on to working and middle-income families. He was sharply critical of Pritzker’s COVID-19 pandemic response, saying Illinois received a poor grade from national researchers evaluating state responses, and argued that the state continued raising taxes during and after the pandemic even as most neighboring states cut them. He said Illinois currently ranks near the bottom nationally on measures including private-sector job growth since the pandemic.
Asked about the upcoming Chicago mayoral race, Vallas said he expects Johnson to seek reelection despite reported interest from some on the left in recruiting an alternative candidate, and predicted a crowded field including several Black candidates, among them businessman Willie Wilson. Vallas said the Illinois Policy Institute and its affiliated Urban Center are currently focused on school board elections rather than the mayoral race, citing declining public support for the Chicago Teachers Union and what he described as an agenda centered on decentralizing school governance, expanding charter schools and public school choice, and supporting state participation in a federal scholarship program that would provide funding for private school tuition and supplemental educational services.
Vallas addressed a defamation lawsuit filed by the Chicago Teachers Union against the Illinois Policy Institute and the Liberty Justice Center, calling the suit meritless and comparing it to a defamation claim previously filed against him by former state representative Scott Drury that he said was ultimately unsuccessful. He argued the union’s declining polling numbers and difficulty fielding candidates for school board seats reflect an organization in decline, and said any discovery process in the lawsuit could expose further scrutiny of the union’s internal finances, which he said have already faced separate legal challenges from a faction of union members critical of the union’s financial transparency.