Illinois House Republican legislators looking for votes in next year’s elections will be thinking of themselves and not the state’s schoolchildren if Gov. Jim Edgar’s school funding bill passes today.

The plan attempts to funnel badly needed educational funds to the state’s poorest school districts, but it has a number of questionable premises rendering it difficult to support.

Legislators may want to fend off resurgent criticism of not doing anything for Illinois education by voting today for the plan, known as House Bill 452.

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The truth is, Illinoisans would be much better served if lawmakers devised and passed a better school funding plan next year.

House Bill 452, a $485 million plan for Illinois’ poorest schools, was passed in the Illinois Senate but shot down last month in the Illinois House. It is again being considered by the House in today’s special session.

It calls for recipe of tax increases including a 14-cents per cigarette pack tax increase and a graduated gambling tax increase on riverboat casino revenues to eventually raise poor school districts’ spending per pupil to $4,225, an amount considered by educators to be the minimum spending amount for quality education. This minimum amount will increase over time, and the influx of funding also will provide for that inflation. This bill would raise these taxes for additional educational funding until 2001.

But taxing casino profits and revenue from cigarette sales is not a financially stable proposition. Using these sin taxes to help Illinois schoolchildren does not guarantee steady funding. Democratic candidate for State Senate Barb Brown wisely warns, We don’t know where these industries will be in the future. And we cannot truly pinpoint this unstable funding, in spite of Sen. Dave Luechtefeld’s opinion that this uncertainty of funding is of little consequence. What happens if funding from these taxes comes up short of educators’ and lawmakers’ goals?

Also, the educational funding plan is specifically designed to aid the state’s poorer school districts many of which are in Central and Southern Illinois. Outside of Northern Illinois’ inner-city and poorer suburban districts, a number of that area’s school districts typically spend thousands more per student than the minimum $4,225 amount.

A major incentive for Northern legislators of more affluent areas to pass the bill lies in a buried premise only recently discovered. That premise attempts to balance the poorer schools’ potential $485 million bonanza with benefits for other school districts not targeted for the money.

A substantial amount of $1.4 million in state-backed construction bonds taken out by school districts and provided for in this bill would be assumed by the state. So while rural and poorer school districts in Central and Southern Illinois finally would get the educational funding that they need, other school districts would make out like bandits.

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These problems alone should force legislators to vote against this bill today. Other concerned citizens have voiced a wide range of other problems with the bill.

Still, Edgar especially would like to see his bill drafted with the help of legislative leaders passed. This is in spite of Edgar’s admitting the plan is not his first choice and that it does have its shortcomings.

The outgoing governor wants to be remembered as the education governor, but passing this flawed bill would indicate more of a desire to get something done in name’s sake only. Because of his failure to pass a plan to increase income taxes by 25 percent to give $614 million to the state’s poorest schools last spring, Edgar wants salvation.

Besides, one has to wonder whether the weight of Edgar’s concern rests upon actually doing something beneficial for Illinois students, or upon doing something for his gubernatorial legacy. Again, this also holds true for the legislators seeking our votes come 1998.

Legislators should vote against this plan, and Illinois lawmakers’ foremost concern during next spring’s legislative session should be replacing Edgar’s plan with a better one.