Ruining Illinois

Thumbing his nose at taxpayers and with the complicity of the majority of the Cook County commissioners, Board Chairman Todd Stroger slugs us with a tax hike in the face of a recession. The county sales tax more than doubles from .75% to 1.75%. Tribune:

The new tax increase, which confers the dubious honor on Chicago of having the highest sales tax -- 10.25 percent -- of any major U.S. city, will add about $426 million annually to the county's coffers.

I believe suburban Cook County sales taxes will also be higher than any major city in the country--the base sales tax rate for Cook County will be 9%. Illinois is already in the cellar economically compared to other states and this will only make things worse:

"As a result of a lack of a reasonable financial plan we're going to raise taxes and jeopardize the economic vitality of the Chicago region," said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a fiscal watchdog group.

Msall said the county's increase is four times greater than the sales-tax increase granted to the CTA, which agreed to a series of "comprehensive and historic" reforms.

"There is no reform tied to this," said Msall. "There is nothing here the taxpayers can look forward to. ... Nothing in this budget that gives the Civic Federation confidence that the millions collected [under the tax increases] are going to be spent any differently than the other $3 billion in the budget."

Jerry Roper, president and chief executive officer of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, said the sales-tax increase "impacts our jobs climate and makes our region more expensive and less competitive as our country lies on the brink of recession."

Yet this week, even as he faced a deadline on the budget, Todd Stroger once again padded the county payroll at our expense, hiring still another friend as a PR flack at a six-figure salary. NBC 5 Chicago:

Sources said Stroger is waiting to officially announce Mullins' hiring until after the county budget is passed. It's not clear what Mullins would be paid, but the budget calls for the job to pay $105,059.

Stroger is not dumping his old $100,000-a-year PR director, Andre Garner. He will shuffle Garner into a vacant job in the county planning department and cut his pay 10 percent.

Mullins would supervise another former Stroger PR chief, Chinta Strausberg -- who is now paid $99,807 a year as Stroger's liaison to churches -- as well as $85,000-a-year hospital spokesman Sean Howard, who was fired from Stroger's political campaign after he was arrested on charges of stalking a woman.

Mullins has a solid reputation at the Police Department, but his hiring comes on the heels of Stroger's hiring another childhood friend, his cousin, his best friend's wife and even his floor leader's girlfriend for high-level county jobs.

As those who can afford it flee Illinois and job creation tanks, those in government or with relatives in government on the make for more patronage jobs will be left to vote themselves a raise or two or three. Eventually the taxes will bite deeply into the middle class, because Todd Stroger and the Dems who run things at every level of government will have run so many taxpayers out of state. They are ruining Illinois for us and for our children.

UPDATE: The Bench scathing on Larry Suffredin who provided the vote to put this tax increase over the top.