The comments by Cook County Assessor James Houlihan (“If you care about schools and property taxes ?,” Commentary, Oct. 17) clamor to be supported by numbers. Currently, about 63 percent of your property tax bill pays for public schools and the state of Illinois pays an additional 28 percent. With those numbers, one can calculate the dollar decrease in property tax bills if Illinois increased its support, now ranked 49th among states.

Making reasonable assumptions, if your current property tax bill is $10,000, increasing state support from the current 28 percent to levels of 40 percent, 50 percent, and 60 percent would lead to reduced property tax bills of $8,950, $8,075, and $7,200, respectively. Those paying taxes other than $10,000 would see the same significant proportional decreases.

More than this, greater state support and the resultant smaller reliance on local property taxes would reduce the arguably immoral disparity in funding between wealthy and poor communities, providing a better educated workforce statewide. This would be a significant attraction to business and industry and their expansion would provide additional taxes, further reducing the reliance on property taxes.

Such result directly from an increase in state funding for education, which, as Mr. Houlihan emphasized, can only be instituted constitutionally. They are reasons enough to vote “yes” on Nov. 4 to convene a constitutional convention.