For Earlean Collins, Joan Patricia Murphy and Roberto Maldonado, Tuesday is the day that will mark them indelibly as public officials who put citizens’ interests first–or as stooges for a Cook County regime run amok.
Truth be told, most of the votes that Collins, Murphy and Maldonado cast as members of the Cook County Board don’t influence their political futures. So many of those votes concern the procedural, the mundane, that not even their future political opponents will be able to exploit the majority of their ayes and nays.
Tuesday , though, will be very different. Tuesday the 17 members of the County Board are scheduled to debate–and presumably vote on–needless and harmful tax increases that will gouge poor people in order to keep some of the county’s political payrollers from losing jobs.
Approval or rejection of those tax hikes–an increase in the county sales tax and creation of a new lease tax on rentals–probably rests with Collins, Murphy and Maldonado. With six votes (including his own) in his pocket and eight board members apparently beyond his reach, Board President John Stroger probably needs the votes of Collins, Murphy and Maldonado in order to jam his tax increases down citizens’ throats.
Never mind that Collins campaigned last year as a reformer who enthusiastically promised to cut the county payroll rather than raise taxes. Or that, last year, Stroger openly threatened to have her unseated because she had shown flashes of independence. Or, worst of all, that Stroger’s sales tax hike would fall heaviest on the poorest of Collins’ many impoverished constituents.
Never mind that the tax increases would leave auto dealerships and many other businesses in Murphy’s south suburban district more vulnerable to competitors in Will County and in Indiana. Or that some of the good candidates Murphy outlasted to win her seat last year can’t wait to make her a one-term wonder.
Never mind that the talented Maldonado has–at least until he votes on Stroger’s tax hikes–a good shot at higher office, perhaps in Washington. What future opponent won’t try to trash Maldonado if, at such a critical moment as this, he votes to raise taxes for one of the most spendthrift units of government in Illinois?
Asking for tax increases would be one thing if Cook County already had done the hard work of streamlining and consolidating its grossly inefficient and wasteful operations. But no. Lamely sticking it to taxpayers, rather than forcing the fat, featherbedded government he oversees to cut a relatively small $86 million in spending, is Stroger’s chosen means of propping up his proposed 2004 budget of almost $3 billion.
Stroger’s flunkies evidently understand that the forces of change which last year ousted five incumbent board members have been awakened by his proposed tax increases. The flunkies have been drumming up pressure on board members–from public employee unions that know what an easy mark county government is, from pols who owe Stroger favors, and from interest groups that slurp at the county trough.
Collins, Murphy and Maldonado aren’t the only board members whose integrity is on the line. Three votes supposedly in Stroger’s camp belong to John Daley, Bobbie Steele and Deborah Sims. Like Collins and Murphy, those three said in various ways during their 2002 campaigns that payrolls should be cut before taxes are raised. Whether Daley, Steele and Sims spoke truth or lies will soon be obvious. Like Collins, Murphy and Maldonado, their reputations will be very much at risk as Tuesday dawns.
