Partisan politics depends on official

Pat Quinn wants Illinois government to impose a significant hike in the state income tax, while Todd Stroger is the guy who wishes he could keep the significant boost he got the Cook County Board to approve last year.

Basically, both men have come out in support of tax hikes at a time when certain people are determined to demonize anyone who doesn’t preach a mantra of “cut, cut, cut.”

BUT QUINN GETS a bit of a break because people remember that we could still have Rod Blagojevich as governor, while Stroger is going to get bashed for every single thing that goes wrong with county government – regardless of whether or not it is his fault.

I found it interesting to learn Tuesday that on the same day Quinn is forcing the Legislature to return to the Statehouse in Springpatch to consider taking actions that would balance the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, Stroger is being forced to take back the sales tax increase that was approved in 2008.

Few people are criticizing Quinn for being in support of something that would produce more revenue for state government – although they might claim he’s getting a tad hysterical in his claims of how severe the problem truly is.

For his critics, Quinn is exaggerating the size needed for a tax hike. Those critics are just as likely to get public criticism as is Quinn on this issue.

STROGER FACES JUST the opposite situation. One can make a completely legitimate argument that the sales tax hike enacted by the county last year is not all that much – and that Cook County’s portion of the overall sales tax (10.25 percent in Chicago, about 9.5 percent in the suburbs, depending on which town one buys something in) is not that significant.

Yet Stroger will get the blame, even if there’s enough to go around to all of the county government officials.

I’m sure there are people out there who view the local political scene as a trio of Blagojevich, Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., and Stroger. They dumped one – and now they want to get rid of the other two.

Both Burris and Stroger are likely to survive any attempt to unseat them. So they will get to finish out their terms that run through all of next year. The Democratic primary of 2010 will be the chance to turn both men into lame ducks for the bulk of the year.

I DON’T KNOW how the state situation will turn out. I was curious to see if the Legislature remained in Springfield for more than one day on Tuesday.

Would they go through the motions of pretending to try to reach a deal that would create a state budget that has enough funding for all of state fiscal year 2010 (which begins July 1, 2009)?

Would they actually engage in serious negotiations with Quinn’s budget people (fat chance, I’d say)?

Instead, they wound up walking away from the Capitol after one day Tuesday, claiming that it is a waste of their time to stay any longer. If that’s the case, they’re gambling that Quinn is bluffing when he talks about the severe cuts to many needed social programs (particularly health care-related) that he says will have to be made if the Legislature does nothing.

IN SHORT, THE political games are going to reach a peak in Springfield in the coming week.

By comparison, the “games” are over at the Cook County Building (the less-glamorous half of City Hall).

The county board that has been engaging in politically-partisan efforts to repeal the sales tax hike and blame it all on Todd Stroger – knowing full-well that Stroger has the authority to veto their efforts and make it stick – is done doing that.

Watching the county commissioners go through the process and make grand pronouncements about why they’re all doing “the right thing” for the county taxpayers has gotten old.

IT IS TIME for serious negotiation.

And that is what Crain’s Chicago Business reported on Tuesday appears to have happened.

The business-oriented newspaper says that county Commissioner John Daley (also known as the mayor’s younger brother) has worked out a deal by which half of the increase that was approved last year will be repealed as of Jan. 1, 2010.

That means instead of reverting to the county share of the sales tax being 0.75 percent, it will be 1.25 percent. Which is significantly less than the 1.75 percent that people shopping in Cook County have been paying this year.

THAT CHANGE IS likely to be voted on when the county board meets again next week.

It will enable the hard-core anti-tax types to claim they got a decrease of some sort, which is something that rarely happens with government. Usually, a tax or fee increase (once approved) is here to stay.

Even those temporary fees that are written in ways so that they expire on a future date usually get expanded.

But for Stroger, it also will be helpful because he’ll be able to spin the issue and claim he was able to produce a little bit of extra revenue (and that it is his critics that prevented the full increase from taking effect).

NOT THAT STROGER will be out of the line of fire yet. His critics have so many reasons for wanting to dump him that they will easily come up with another issue to bash him about with.

It’s a shame that Stroger replaced his father as county board president, rather than someone who was politically despised (such as with Quinn taking over for Blagojevich).

Because then, Stroger could do just about anything he wanted and the public reaction would be a sigh of relief that we got rid of the old guy.

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