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| Story in the red box easily dwarfed by Cubs |
If you bothered to look at a printed copy of the Chicago Tribune on Monday, your attention was dominated by the full-color photograph and copy about the Chicago Cubs’ 1-0 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The fact that there was a news story also on Page One above the fold probably got lost in the Cubbie trivia.
AS
A RESULT, you’re going to walk into your polling place on Nov. 8 (or perhaps
earlier if you’re conscientious-enough to show up at an Early Voting Center)
and suddenly be hit with a referendum question that you won’t have a clue what
it’s about.
You
may well let out a little curse and exclaim that “Nobody Told Me About This!!!”
You may well think of people to blame for this lack of information.
So
because I’m going to want to throw your cluelessness back in your face, I’m
going to take a crack here at trying to explain the Safe Roads Amendment, which
is the measure that all voters across Illinois will be asked to say “yes” or “no”
to when they also decide whether they detest the concept of “President Hillary
R. Clinton” so much that they’d vote for a lame-brain like Donald Trump
instead.
It’s
actually a simple concept. There already are taxes being charged whose purpose is
to raise money for road maintenance projects in communities across the state.
THOSE
GAS TAXES that make the price of gasoline for your car cost more in Illinois
than if you fill up your tank in Indiana (which some Chicagoans insist on
doing) are among those taxes.
But
what happens sometimes is that political people, in order to fund special
projects, divert some of that money. What officials want is for an order that
says all money raised by these taxes for road repairs must actually be used for
road repairs and related projects.
No
diversions whatsoever!!!
If
you buy into that line of logic, vote “yes.” In fact, a group called Citizens
to Protect Transportation Funding has come up with new television spots that
may catch your attention (unless you’re the type who deliberately blanks out
when you see partisan political advertising on TV) that tries to say the only
sensible vote one can cast on this measure is an “aye.”
AFTER
ALL, THE reason those particular taxes are in place is to provide the state
with money it then distributes to local communities to pay for the road
resurfacing projects it needs to do in any given year.
Unless
you happen to live in one of those communities (usually more rural places) that
believes pot holes are a part of nature and it’s not normal to have a
perfectly-smooth road surface on a road that has a few years accumulated on it.
Yet
I have to admit I haven’t fully made up my own mind how to vote, largely
because I wonder how much this initiative is motivated by the lobbyists for the
construction industry – people who want to view those road fund monies as their
own private source of income and resent the idea of officials tapping into it
for something else.
I
do think government officials ought to have a certain amount of discretion to
decide what to do with funds, and am not sure that anyone is entitled to a
guarantee of tax revenue proceeds.
AS
IT IS, the Chicago Tribune report acknowledged that the lobbyist group pushing
for this amendment is one that represents the International Union of Operating
Engineers – which represents the construction workers who would be employed by
future road repair projects.
The
Citizens to Protect Transportation Funding has raised some $3.3 million thus
far to support their lobbying efforts, of which about $1 million will be spent
to air those partisan commercials on television in coming weeks.
You’ll
have to decide for yourselves who you back, and which way that swings your
vote. Keeping contractors busy, or trusting your local government official to
be able to decide when discretion should be used and funds should be shifted
elsewhere?
It’s
something to think about. The real losers will be those people who keep
themselves clueless all the way through Election Day, then try to figure out
whom they can blame for their lack of information about the issue.
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