Call Your Commissioners

In his most recent dubious move, the Toddler President Stroger has called an emergency Cook County Board meeting for this Monday, Oct. 1st. Tax increases are the order of the day, what else around here with the Dems running everything and managing nothing.

There are a few wise heads, but will they be able to hold it off? Daily Herald:

If it passes, the measure would give Chicago the highest sales tax rate in the country at 11 percent, and business leaders say it would spell disaster for the Cook County economy, because businesses would flee and consumers would shop in surrounding counties.

While passage of the tax had been regarded as unlikely, some commissioners are now asking why Stroger would call for such a meeting if passing it weren't a likelihood.

Maybe to scare people with a doomsday tax so that when it does come time to actually pass a realistic tax it looks attractive by comparison?

On top of the existing stiff 9%, 2% more would amount to a nearly 30% increase:

Adding fuel to the speculation that Monday's meeting is either a tax scare or an attempt to enact a lesser sales tax is the estimate of what revenue a 2 percentage point increase might yield.

Evanston Democrat Larry Suffredin puts it at $750 million a year -- far more than last year's budget deficit of roughly $500 million and much more than the county has ever claimed to need for next year.

Also throwing doubt on the likelihood that the increase will pass Monday is the need for Finance Chairman John Daley to vote for it.

Three Democrats -- Suffredin, Claypool and Quigley -- have announced their opposition to tax hike, and the five Republicans on the board are expected to follow suit. That means that every other board member would have to vote for it.

At this point you have to question whether such a tax would be counterproductive---whether it would really bring in the revenue it promises, as restaurant and hotel business goes elsewhere and some businesses are forced to close their doors--a double whammy to the economic bottom line of Cook County, as jobs and other tax revenue would drop as well.

Call your commissioners.

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