Challengers hoping to unseat incumbent Democrats in the Illinois House got a marvelous gift Wednesday from many of those very incumbents. By a vote of 65-51, the House fell six yes votes short of killing the full-percentage-point sales tax increase engineered last year by Cook County Board President Todd Stroger. That is, if six of those nays instead had been yeas, the measure would have moved to the Senate. And if the Senate went along, you soon would be paying less in taxes to support Stroger and his astonishingly wasteful government.
Look for your state representative’s name on the roll call, available at chicagotribune.com/tax. Those who voted “no” voted to enable Stroger.
The good news: The House did approve, 95-18, a measure that could still lead to a repeal of the sales tax increase.
That measure would decrease from four-fifths to three-fifths the share of County Board members needed to override a board president’s veto. That bizarre four-fifths threshold has allowed Stroger to thwart his board’s oft-voted desire to reduce or eliminate his cherished sales tax increase.
Wednesday evening, a Senate committee approved its own version of the bill 9-0 (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Chances on the Senate floor should be good — the Senate approved a different version of this override measure last spring. But we know Springfield. We’ll believe legislators have changed this threshold when Gov. Pat Quinn signs a bill into law. Stroger’s tax increase already has survived multiple attempts to put a stake through its heart.
Senators, get this threshold changed.
We’re glad that all of you in Springfield got to hear Stroger lobbying Wednesday to keep his sales tax increase intact. We’re perpetually amazed at any politician who would lard his payroll with a Friends and Family Hiring Plan and then cry that taxpayers need to do more for his government.
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YOUR SALES TAX CALENDAR
Days since the Cook County Board raised the sales tax: 472
Days until the Feb. 2, 2010, Illinois primary election: 110
