Todd+Mike=Higher Taxes

Soaring taxes lead to sore taxpayers

July 2, 2008

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BY CAROL MARIN cmarin@suntimes.com

There it was, right in front of me, the face of the Dump Todd Stroger Revolution. I witnessed it at the Starbucks on Racine and Wrightwood at 6:38 a.m. Tuesday.

The guy ahead of me was getting his usual, a grande coffee, caf not decaf.

Monday's price: $2.04.

Tuesday's price: $2.07.

The young man behind the counter explained a county sales tax hike necessitated the price hike.

The guy was grumbling. I didn't catch all of it, but two words were crystal clear: "Todd Stroger."

Let's get the obvious out of the way. Lincoln Park Starbucks sippers are not the ones hardest hit by cranking up the sales tax; poor people are. The grumbling guy could downsize by dropping by Dunkin' Donuts, but he has enough money to avoid such sacrifices.

Furthermore, latte lovers in Cook County barely know there is a Cook County. They can name their alderman, but their county commissioner might as well be from Mars.

But pennies are relevant again, especially because Chicago now has the nation's highest sales tax.

Saturday, a truck stop in Sawyer, Mich., proved the point. The big board proclaimed "3.99" a gallon, not the "4.15" of the day before. Many cars clogging the entrance were driven by Cook County Starbucks types who have enough income to own summer places along the Lake Michigan shore or to vacation there. But saving 16 cents a gallon produced a mild stampede.

There comes a tipping point. A moment when things crystalize. And in that moment, a revolt can be born.

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger presides over a government that many of us mistakenly think we don't use. A government that runs one of the largest court systems in the world, one of the biggest jails and a health care network that everyday serves and saves the lives of people who have no other place to go. We need every bit of it to maintain the kind of society we claim to believe in.

Then again, what we don't need is what Stroger has offered in terms of leadership. He runs a government that spits in the eye of the taxpayers who support it. It is an 8th Ward fiefdom in which friends, relatives and precinct workers get high-paying, often six-figure jobs whether they have credentials to do the work or not.

Reform efforts are more often than not thwarted by Stroger allies who like things just the way they are.

There is every indication that Todd Stroger, miraculously installed by ward bosses following his father's illness, will run for a second term in 2010.

There is every reason to believe that Mayor Daley and House Speaker Michael Madigan are already helping him lay the groundwork, raise the cash and turn out the vote. After all, didn't Madigan engineer moving the Illinois primary to Feb. 2? That wasn't to help Barack Obama in this year's presidential contests. C'mon. That was to make sure that the snow, sleet and blizzard season could ensure a depressed turnout in future elections leaving the outcome in the hands of the regulars (read patronage workers) who always turn out. Their jobs depend on it. And Madigan, the mayor and the mayor's county commissioner brother, John, all know that. Todd Stroger is a wholly owned subsidiary of their interests.

But now, penny by penny and tax by tax, slumbering county voters are waking up and discovering Cook County government. And Todd Stroger.

If they are getting angry enough to drive to collar counties with lower sales taxes in order to shop, by 2010 that anger may finally be enough to show Democratic power brokers that voters know how to turn their well-planned primary on its head.