EXTRA: Gas tax hike kicks in Monday -- Happy Fiscal New Year!!!

I almost feel like I ought to be making a point to fill up the gasoline tank this weekend – what with new Illinois state taxes on the price of a gallon of gas going up as of Monday.

How long until you've seen gas prices this low?

It is part of the capital spending plan the General Assembly and Gov J.B. Pritzker approved earlier this year, meant to raise some $45 billion to pay for improvements needed in state construction projects.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, the motor fuel tax for Illinois will increase from 19 cents per gallon to 38 cents – which is the first such increase since 1990 – literally back at the tail end of Jim Thompson’s time as governor.

On top of that, municipalities in Cook County were given the option of creating their own 3-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline – on top of what the state will charge,

The coming of the new Fiscal Year on Monday means that is when these new rates will take effect. We’ll start noticing the prices on the rise as of that date – with probably many of those people living near the Illinois borders with Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri and Kentucky going out of their way to buy their gasoline elsewhere.

Although Pritzker may have put the need for money into perspective when he said, “it means fewer blown-out tires, fewer car axles thrown out of balance, fewer fender benders and fewer life-threatening car accidents” by having better roads. Although I suspect many people are just too eager to complain about someone regardless of reality.

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Emanuel remains ambitious in his final months serving in his mayoral post

I’ll say one thing for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel – he’s an ambitious S-O-B.

EMANUEL: Won't depart a failure

He’s not seeking re-election, and in fact the process of picking his replacement is now underway. People interested in mayoral politics are focused on the dozens of people with dreams of replacing Rahm.

EMANUEL IS ABOUT as “lame” a duck as one can be. Not exactly someone who’s capable of going out with a “bang,” because most people are determined to ignore anything he says or thinks.

Yet perhaps it’s just evidence of the political-style “fighter” he always was. The guy once nicknamed “Rahm-bo” isn’t going to let himself be turned irrelevant.

And he also seems determined to impose policy changes for Chicago’s betterment; although I have no doubt there will be critics of everything Emanuel suggests – particularly if they’re the type who’ve been complaining about him for the past just under eight years that Rahm served as mayor.

Just the other night, I happened to be in attendance at a suburban City Council meeting where the focus of discussion amongst those aldermen was Emanuel. Let’s just say that Rahm’s name most definitely was taken in vain.

WHAT IRRITATED THOSE suburban municipal officials? Gas prices.

For it was on Tuesday that Emanuel suggested an increase in the gasoline tax – possibly 20 to 30 cents more per gallon, to help raise money for mass transit and road improvements.

By the way, the mayor isn’t talking about having Chicago raise its gas taxes. He’s talking about having the entirety of Illinois do so.

Which makes sense, in one way. If this were merely a Chicago city gas tax hike, it would balloon the price of gasoline at Chicago-based fueling stations so high that no one would ever buy gasoline again in the city.

MAKE IT A statewide thing, and you wouldn’t have such a drastic gas price differential that motorists would find it worth their while to drive out to suburban gas stations in order to load up their tanks on the petrol that enables them to function.

But while Emanuel has some suburban municipal officials on his side, there are others grossly offended. Mainly because they know their local voters will hate the idea of anything that makes gasoline prices go higher.

Usually, the local politicos can make outlandish claims about Arab oil sheikhs enriching themselves. They certainly don’t want anybody doing anything that would make it appear as though blame should be placed locally for rising gas prices.

Particularly since it isn’t just Chicago that has municipal elections come February and April of 2019 – just about every suburb has a mayoral post up for grabs. I don’t doubt many local political people will want to see this suggested gas tax hike fail.

IT ISN’T JUST gas that gets Emanuel worked up. He followed up that idea with suggestions that marijuana be legalized (and taxed, appropriately) and a casino opened in the city. All to try to raise money to pay off a public pension debt that has risen into the billions of dollars.

Those are both issues that will stir up a stink amongst some people in good times. They’d be a test of one’s political strength.

Yet Emanuel is trying to do them at a time when he’s on his way out the door and most people would rather he just pipe down! Does Rahm have the political skill to get any of these goals accomplished? Can he overcome those people who would consider it their own political goal to see Emanuel leave office a failure?

Or perhaps we should consider one other outcome – some of these issues eventually get enacted, but not quickly enough for a “Mayor Emanuel” to be able to take credit. How many might support a Chicago casino, for example, if it means Emanuel’s mayoral successor gets to take credit?

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Does anyone seriously think people are better off living under Lake Shore Dr.?

I’m not kidding with that question. Because when it comes to the matter of people opposing city officials who want to do repairs to the drive in the Uptown neighborhood because it forced homeless people to relocate, I just don’t get it.

Homeless not just in Uptown, also downtown

The issue came to a head earlier this week when Chicago police had to use force to get people who had developed a “tent city” of sorts near Wilson and Lawrence avenues to leave the area.

CITY OFFICIALS HAD made arrangements for homeless shelters to accommodate those residents, but many of the homeless did not want to go. Which I almost understand – when one has little in life, they tend to cling too tightly to what little they do have.

No matter how cruddy it might be.

But there were activist groups who were fighting the city, trying to get measures approved in court that would interfere with the efforts to do the repair work to the bridges that are some 85 years old and are considered to be structurally deficient, due to age.

To those activists, the right of a person to take shelter under the bridges was more important than the public safety at large.

THERE ALSO ARE some people who think that plans to include bicycle paths are less about making public improvements for the surrounding neighborhood and more about making the area unsuitable for the return of homeless people once the bridge repairs are complete spring of next year.

Now throughout my years as a reporter-type person, I have heard countless arguments about gentrification and community repairs being made that do not take into account the existing residents and are meant more to turn a community into a place suitable for someone of a higher economic bracket.

I actually can sympathize with those arguments on the grounds that you’re trying to chase existing residents from their homes.

But in this case, we’re talking about people without homes. Personally, I find it shameful to think that anyone can find homelessness to be acceptable, and think that those people forced to seek shelter in public places isn’t an embarrassment to our society as a whole.

I’D SAY IT’S wrong that it took a road repair project to get city officials concerned enough to want to find proper shelter for those individuals in our society who, often through no fault of their own, have no other place to stay.

I’d say it’s long overdue that city officials made an effort to find alternate sites for those people who in some cases were pitching tents (and in some cases might not have even had that much shelter) to provide themselves something resembling housing.

And I’d say city officials ought to be concerned about the existence of conditions that cause many of those homeless officials to resist the idea of staying in a homeless shelter.

Seriously, anyone who reads the news reports of recent days about this issue can hear from those homeless who think a tent is a better shelter because of the sanitary conditions or overcrowded conditions of some of the homeless shelters.

IT TRULY IS sad to think our society in Chicago has reached a point where some people think they’re safer and more secure living out in the open of the Uptown neighborhood (which may not be the impoverished turf along the north lakefront that it used to be, but is still far from luxurious) rather than in a place with electricity and running water.

Perhaps those activists who were fighting in court until recently to thwart the road repair projects should have focused their efforts to improve the shelter options for those people whose life circumstances have caused them to resort to such conditions.

And I don’t want to hear from anyone who wants to believe that some people don’t know better and want to live like that. They’re probably the same nitwits who think that some women choose to be in prostitution.

We all have an obligation to try to help those at the bottom rungs of our society, if for the only reason being that our society as a whole is no longer than its lowest members.

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‘Safe roads’ amendment one of those things you ignore ‘til it's too late

You probably received a little booklet printed on light blue paper a couple of weeks ago, and promptly tossed it into the trash (or your recycling bin if you’re environmentally conscious).
 

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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