Chicago Tribune Editorial: Kill the whole tax hike

Chicago Tribune Editorial: Kill the whole tax hike
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
November 10, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-1110edit1nov10,0,24423.story


"I support lowering the majority needed to override a presidential veto from four-fifths to three-fifths, and will do all that I can to help (proponents of the change) accomplish this.

"I know full well this means it would be easier for the Cook County commissioners to override any presidential veto that I may make as the next Cook County Board President, and even knowing that, I support this measure. This is not about politics or power, this about what is best for Cook County."

-- Todd Stroger, Oct. 11, 2006

Yes, candidate Todd Stroger was for a sensible veto override threshold before County Board President Todd Stroger was against it. But what Stroger is for or against no longer matters. Gov. Pat Quinn on Saturday signed the three-fifths threshold into law. Bravo.

County Board members, no more half-measures, no more shielding Stroger and the patronage excesses his sales tax increase has supported. Infuriated voters expect you to repeal all of the full-percentage-point hike Stroger championed -- a boost that especially has hurt poor citizens and has driven retail business elsewhere.

Stroger's apologists try to blame recession for that lost commerce. But the Chaddick Institute of Metropolitan Development at DePaul University reports that retail sales in suburban Cook County plummeted 14.4 percent from the second quarter of 2008 -- just before the hike took effect -- to the second quarter of 2009. That's a bigger drop than in the five collar counties studied.

And no wonder: The average sales tax in Cook County, including Chicago's highest-city-sales-tax-gouge-in-the-U.S., exceeds the average sales tax in the collars by more than 2 percentage points. On big purchases, that's serious money. Merchants have lost business not only to the collars, but to Indiana, Wisconsin and the Internet.

County Board member Larry Suffredin on Monday filed a request from 10 of the 17 commissioners for a special meeting next Monday to yet again consider a rollback of the tax hike. The board thrice has voted for rollbacks of various sizes -- and each time Stroger has had enough loyalists to sustain his veto. If that scenario plays out again, the new law, effective when Quinn signed it, drops the number of board members needed to override Stroger from 14 to 11.

Lest anyone on the County Board think that half a loaf is good enough: The stakes separating a full from a partial rollback are huge for consumers. Stroger's full tax hike rips them off for roughly $400 million a year. Another reason for a full rollback: Cook County officials won't consolidate offices and slash the bloat from their payroll -- the mopey cousins, the snoozing in-laws, the assistant-thises-and-thats, the Democratic precinct workers -- until lower sales tax revenue forces them to starkly economize.

Owing to the speed at which governments function, voting out Stroger's tax hike now won't eliminate it until July 1. But a prompt decision would force Stroger and the board to build the coming revenue loss into their budget for the fiscal year that begins Dec. 1.

Stroger confidently has proposed a $3 billion budget that, despite the recession's pressure on taxpayers, would raise county spending by $131 million. Preposterous. Cook County officials need a reminder that employers and other taxpayers cannot indefinitely sustain all of their slovenly spending on the county's huge headcount. We hope that, in the Feb. 2 primary, voters retire Stroger and board members who side with him in protecting egregious spending.

County Board members, bear in mind those words of Todd Stroger, echoing from 2006: "This is not about politics or power, this about what is best for Cook County." The Illinois legislature and governor did their parts by fixing the override provision. Now it's your job to kill the whole tax hike.

Take one more look at this little calendar. And be sure to read every word: