Hoosier booze on Sundays; cheap(er) pop in Illinois. Freedom? Or $$$!

As one who was born in the part of Chicago and raised in the part of the suburbs where the Illinois/Indiana border was nearby and Hoosiers were a different (although not quite alien) species, I have long been used to having to remember who can buy what (and when) on which side of State Line Road.

You won't have to cross the state line ...

The issue received some prominence last year when Cook County tried enacting a special sales tax on pop and other sweetened beverages – resulting in some Illinoisans making special trips to places like Hammond, Munster or Dyer to avoid paying the tax.

WHILE ALL ALONG, some Hoosiers were making a trip westward every Sunday if/when they wanted to purchase alcoholic beverages – and just couldn’t bring themselves to wait until Monday.

The “pop tax” went away a couple of months ago, although some people who long had been in the habit of buying cheap pop in Indiana continue to do so. Personally, I feel like it’s their gasoline they waste for such a trip – although they probably justify it on the grounds that gas is cheaper in Indiana ($2.42 a gallon, the last time I bought some Friday in Hammond a couple of blocks from Illinois).

Now, the liquor ban – which actually dates back to Indiana’s earliest days as a state two centuries ago – is also withering away.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law this week a measure eliminating Sunday restrictions on alcoholic beverage sales, and it takes effect with this Sunday. Heck, Holcomb plans to have a “cook-out” at the governor’s mansion in Indianapolis to celebrate.

UNDER THE NEW law, liquor sales can start at Noon – which means you can’t skip out on going to church to get yourselves liquored up. But you can buy your booze after church services.

This is an idea whose political time had come, because for many years the lobbyists for the liquor industry opposed Sunday sales. Small liquor stores feared people would go to supermarkets with well-stocked liquor aisles and big-box retailers with sizable liquor departments to make such purchases.

But it seems that the mood of the public was such that the liquor industry took up the cause of the bigger retailers. Holcomb himself said of the move, “Today is a big day… it’s all about the consumer.”

... to buy your booze Sunday afternoon

So my guess is that the entity that will take a hit will be some of the Illinois-based retailers who were getting Sunday sales from people living near the state line who just couldn’t wait to consume some alcohol – some beer or booze, some hooch or whatever other snazzy term you use to describe it.

MY GUESS IS that there are enough Illinois-based boozers who will continue to make their Sunday purchases that our state’s retailers won’t take on a total financial loss.

Will we now have to find some other product that Illinois and Indiana residents can quibble over, or find some sort of moral grounds to dispute?

We in Illinois should be honest in not trying to claim some sense of superiority about liquor sales, because there are communities which have harsher laws governing liquor sales within their boundaries

I remember when I first moved to Springfield a couple of decades ago and discovering that I had to wait another hour on that particular Sunday before I could pick up a six-pack of beer.

ALTHOUGH IT’S MY understanding that the Illinois capital city has since eased its own standards on liquor sales.

HOLCOMB: A 'kegger' at guv's house Sunday?

There’s money to be made by letting someone buy some beer on Sunday – instead of having to wait a little longer. Heck, it seems that even Indiana has come to its senses with its new laws that will allow people to walk into the Jewel-Osco or the Strack & Van Til supermarkets to pick up the liquor they think will enliven whatever party or other weekend gathering they happen to be holding.

Just one question – is part of the reason for expanding liquor sales to the east of the state line that one needs to have a bit of a buzz going to be able to spend that much time living in the land of Hoosierdom?

Which may be like the people from Illinois who used to go in search of cheaper pop and cited high-minded moralistic points, when all the carbonation in the pop ensured they were full of gas (as in the belching kind)!

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Rauner makes appeal to Hegewisch-ites to prolong the state budget battle

It’s not every day political people pay any attention to Hegewisch – as in the neighborhood at Chicago’s far southeastern corner where Indiana is a daily reality.

Pate won his political fight in Hegewisch

I remember then-Senate Minority Leader James “Pate” Philip back in 1990 making the trek from his suburb near O’Hare International Airport to visit Hegewisch to reassure the residents that he would oppose all efforts to pave over their streets and homes to develop a new Chicago-area airport.

PATE WON THAT political fight. But the reason the event sticks in my mind is that it is among the few bits of attention paid to Hegewisch by anyone with political influence.

Will Rauner be less successful in his brawl?

Political people making the trek out to Hegewisch do it so infrequently that it is still considered a big deal locally that the final public appearance Richard J. Daley made as mayor was to Mann Park out on 131^st Street – where he shot a basketball through a hoop. He died later the same day in December 1976 while visiting his doctor at a Michigan Avenue office.

That is why it is unique Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner felt compelled to make the trip to Hegewisch on Wednesday, where he hoped to encounter a sympathetic audience of people as part of his last-ditch effort to urge the General Assembly to go along with his rejection of a state budget -- thereby keeping the political battle alive.

Specifically, he went to one of the few places in Chicago where the eastern boundary isn’t the Lake Michigan shoreline, but is State Line Road – with the Hoosier State of Indiana lying just across the street.

130th Street/Torrence Avenue one of the few entrance points to Hegewisch

IT IS A place that in recent weeks has been getting appeals from Indiana-based supermarket chains telling them that they can avoid paying the proposed sales tax hike on pop and other sweetened drinks if they cross over the state line and buy their goods.

Just like they can get gasoline for their cars for anywhere from 20 to 30 cents per gallon less in Indiana.

Hegewisch is the land by the landfills where Chicago used to dump its trash

And now, Rauner wants us to think he’s sympathetic to Hegewisch-ites (or is it Hegewischians?) who live so close to the border that they will feel the direct impact of having to cope with a higher income tax rate.

Rauner might as well be doing the work of Chamber of Commerce groups throughout Indiana in letting people know how miserable a place he thinks Illinois will become. What with him dragging out business-types from the Hegewisch neighborhood who were willing to say they’d be willing to “pick up and drive two minutes to Indiana.”

ALTHOUGH I DON’T think the governor is really that concerned. He’s trying to minimize the damage to his political reputation since it appears that the winner of the partisan battles of the past two years will turn out to be Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

He’s going to be able to claim he and his allies on Thursday finally got a budget passed – with no help from Rauner or his people.

Of course, Rauner will claim over and over (actually, he’s already started) that Madigan’s plan is a tax hike of some 32 percent. Actually, it’s a 1.25 percent boost in the rate, meant to produce some 32 percent more revenue, but facts and details rarely matter to the people spewing partisan nonsense.

DALEY: It all came to an end in Hegewisch

Personally, I think it is sad it took two years to reach this point. This particular increase could have been done during the spring of 2015 and we never would have known the misery of the past two years watching our politicos stumble about like rubes.

WHICH IS WHY there really isn’t a winner. There’s merely a stage set for the partisan nonsense we’re going to be subjected to between now and the general elections of November 2018.

Voters will get their chance at that time to show which of the two political leaders they are most disgusted with – both are convinced that it has to be “the other guy.”

Madigan has made statements about “working with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to begin healing the wounds of the last several years.” Although the interesting point will be to see which wounds develop on the GOP side.

I’m sure those Republican legislators who wound up switching sides against Rauner’s budget rejection will lose out on the financial help the governor would have provided to their re-election bids. How much more spiteful Rauner can be remains to be seen.

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