Indian Prairie Dist. 204 fighting to keep payroll tax

The Illinois tax code has proved to be too tough for Indian Prairie Unit District 204 and its president, Curt Bradshaw, so officials are going to fight to change it.

About a month ago, Bradshaw suggested the district withhold roughly $500,000 in monthly payroll taxes it sends to Springfield until the state comes up with $13 million in back payments it owes the district.

"Exactly as we suspected, there are laws that prevent us from doing that so our attorney took a look at that and made sure that there are, in fact, laws," Bradshaw said Monday night. "So as we would suspect, the next step is writing a resolution for the Illinois Association of School Boards to request that the rest of the school boards would support changing that law to allow for situations like we're in right now where the state allows us to offset money that they owe us in the form of what we're paying them, which is the state income tax."

Bradshaw said he'll draft a resolution and present it to the board on June 21, three days before resolution proposals are due to be considered in the winter.

"This is a mechanism that the state has used for a very long time to basically pay their bills on our backs and it's something we need to take a look at," he said. "It's the peak of hypocrisy and irony when they owe us that much money and we continue to fund them."

Susan Hofer, state department of revenue spokeswoman, said last month that the state constitution requires the district to pay up

"The school district collects that (payroll) money on behalf of an employee and forwards it on the employee's behalf to pay that employee's portion of the personal income tax," Hofer said at the time. "So those taxes are not (the district's) money."

But Bradshaw's still not buying it.

"I thought it was interesting that the only response from the Illinois Department of Revenue spokesperson was that the law that says we have to do it is the constitution," he said. "It's highly ironic to me when that's not in the constitution whatsoever but very clearly stated in the constitution is the requirement that the state fund the majority of our education."

Teachers union President Val Dranias is all in favor of the district getting its money to save jobs but had one caveat.

"We just want the board president to pay all fines and go to jail that the employees are going to be at risk for when you don't send it in," she jokingly interjected into the discussion.

Naperville state Rep. Darlene Senger, a Republican, and Democrat state Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, of Aurora also have both pledged their support to the district's cause.