Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - 16 Years (Edmund James) [PAGE 30]

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2S

Sixteen Years at the University of Illinois

Section 1. Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois represented in the General Assembly: That there shall be levied and collected for the year 1912 and annually thereafter at the same time and in the same manner that State taxes are collected, a one mill tax for each dollar of the assessed valuation of the taxable property of this State to be paid into the treasury of the State and set apart as a fund for the use and maintenance of the University of Illinois. Section 2. Such fund when so collected, paid in and set apart, shall remain in the treasury of the State until appropriated to the use of the said University of Illinois by act of the General Assembly in accordance with section 18, article 4, of the Constitution of this State. Approved June 10, 1911,10 The passage of this Act makes it possible for the authorities of the University to adopt and carry out a definite administrative and educational policy. It has, however, become evident that with the rapid growth of the University and with the increasing demands made upon it, the mill tax will not alone yield a sufficient sum to provide both for the ordinary operating expenses and for the erection of the buildings now urgently needed by the several colleges of the University. The lower estimate of the receipts from this tax and the consequently lower appropriation for the biennium 1917-19 was due mainly to the fact that the equalised assessment of all taxable property in Illinois for the year 1916 was arbitrarily reduced to $2,502,086,976, a sum $54,571,224 less than the corresponding amount for 1915. This was a decrease of over two per cent, whereas for the preceding six years there had been an average increase of nearly three per cent. Because of this reduction and in view of the fact that for the biennium 1915-17 the receipts from the mill tax had fallen below the $5,000,000 appropriated in 1915 for that period, the Board of Trustees of the University asked of the legislature for the biennium 1917-19 a sum from the mill tax $200,000 less than the amount appropriated for the preceding biennium. An additional sum of $2,000,000 for the biennium 1917-19, re[Lnws of Illinois 1911, pp. 4S4-5