* Cook County Board President Todd Stroger was not a happy man yesterday when the board overwhelmingly overrode his veto of the partial sales tax rollback. He lashed out at Gov. Quinn, who has been patting himself on the back for signing the reduced override threshold bill into law…
“Governor Quinn says he supports the rollback and this would probably stimulate Cook County. Well the state takes six and a quarter. I suggest they take a quarter off. Let’s make a resolution and send it to the governor. Maybe he’d like to stimulate all 102 counties instead of just Cook County.”
He also repeated his threat to challenge the new state law in court.
* Stroger compared himself to a lynched man…
“This is just a piling-on, what happens when the mob mentality happens,” Stroger said, comparing himself to the three men lynched for a crime they did not commit in “The Ox-Bow Incident,” a 1943 movie starring Henry Fonda. “It’s the same thing. Just get enough people riled up and they’ll hang the first person they see.”
But at least one African-American commissioner pointed out that the overwhelming majority of people in her district support the roll-back…
“My district, strangely enough, is four to one for the rollback.” [said West Side Commissioner Earlean Collins]
Commissioner Butler also chimed in…
Commissioner Jerry “Iceman” Butler, said Stroger’s damaged credibility with commissioners likely hurt his push to keep the sales tax in place.
“No matter how much truth you tell them or how many facts you put on the board, they do not want to hear it because your credibility has been damaged. Even though you’ve fired all your cousins, you’ve still been damaged,” he said, an apparent reference to former county CFO Donna Dunnings, a cousin whom Stroger fired last spring.
The name “Stroger” has come to mean “toxic.” He has no credibility left.
* Stroger also warned that people would die as a result of the override vote…
Reducing the sales tax would force the independent board that oversees health care to shut two of three county hospitals and “many if not all of our neighborhood clinics. … Some people will die needlessly for lack of the health care our system provides today.”
But…
Stroger said the lion’s share of new revenue from the sales tax increase is going to the health care system. That contention is disputed by the Civic Federation, a non-partisan government budget watchdog group, which determined only $46 million of the new tax revenue went to the health care system in the previous year.
* This, however, is a decent point…
“We are the government of last resort,” “Never in government before has a penny, the value of a penny, been worth so much, and we are talking about half a penny.” [said Commissioner Joseph Moreno, D-Chicago.]
A lot of this is psychological. The tax hike meant the sales tax burden hit ten percent and people simply freaked out. Suffredin is right…
They cut the county’s share of the sales tax from 1.75 to 1.25 percent and dropped the overall sales tax below 10 percent in the city of Chicago and other municipalities - the highest in the nation for major metropolitan areas - thus removing what Evanston Democratic Commissioner Larry Suffredin, the prime sponsor, labeled a “psychological barrier” for local consumers.
Kadner’s perspective…
Everyone in Cook County is now going to save 50 cents on every $100 they spend. If you spend $10,000 on stuff during the next year, you’ll save $50.
He also points out…
Still, people are calling this “Crook County,” and the feeling is that every half-cent they can save is a half-cent less that the crooks can steal.
Yep.
* Meanwhile, the Sun-Times uses the override to look at the upcoming Democratic primary…
If pre-Barack Obama racial voting patterns hold, O’Brien might be expected to sweep the Northwest and Southwest Sides and the suburbs, leaving Preckwinkle, Stroger and Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, who’s still fighting a petition challenge, to divide the South and West sides.
Maybe, but I think Preckwinkle will do a lot better on the lakefront than pundits are currently realizing. O’Brien’s history of old-style politics won’t play well there at all. Preckwinkle’s message is aimed right at that demographic, and her campaign manager is smarter than the rest of the campaign managers put together. Her biggest question mark is money.
And then there’s hizzoner…
One Northwest Side committeeman predicts Daley will ultimately back the most electable African-American candidate — he thinks that’s Preckwinkle — so as not to anger African-American voters in advance of his next race for mayor. Could Daley, Madigan and the others officially stay neutral while quietly backing one candidate? Some committeemen let their workers circulate petitions for both Brown and O’Brien.