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 It wasn’t exactly the Boston Tea
Party, but it took everything short of dumping Diet Coke into Lake Michigan for
Cook County residents to force the repeal of an unpopular tax on sweetened
beverages.
The county’s penny-per-ounce “soda tax” will be no more come Dec. 1. And
Illinoisans across the state should take heart.
Even the most powerful machine politicians – yes, including House Speaker Mike
Madigan – are not above the wrath of the voting public.
Internal polling for one Cook County commissioner showed more than 90 percent of
constituents opposed the soda tax. Even Cook County Commissioner Ed Moody, an
appointee and longtime political worker for Madigan, flipped his vote in the
face of such extreme numbers.
Ultimately, political support for the repeal became nearly unanimous.
 Tax repeals are some of the rarest birds in Illinois’ political kingdom. Gov.
Jim Thompson’s repeal of the state’s punitive inheritance tax in 1982 and
Chicago City Council’s vote to repeal the city’s feudal “head tax” in 2011 are a
couple notable examples.
Years before the soda tax repeal, 2013 marked the death of a particularly
unpopular sales tax increase in Cook County, which pushed Chicago’s sales tax to
the highest in the nation among major cities. It took the ousting of a board
president to kill the increase. But it was only a matter of time before that tax
hike came back.
Today, Chicagoans are again stuck paying the highest sales tax of any major city
in the country, soda tax or no soda tax.
A similar dynamic has played out at the state level. Former Gov. Pat Quinn
signed a temporary income tax hike into law in 2011, which partially sunset at
the start of 2015. There was a political cost. Quinn lost the governorship. But
billions of dollars in new revenue only further cemented the state’s terrible
spending habits, so when the tax was partially rolled back the books looked even
worse.
Cut to this summer, when Illinoisans watched lawmakers ram through the largest
permanent income tax hike in the state’s history.
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Therein lies the lesson
for Illinoisans who are rightly indignant about their tax bills.
One can righteously rail against tax increases ad nauseam. It might
even have consequences at the ballot box. Indeed, nine of the 15
House Republicans who cast at least one vote for the state income
tax hike have already announced they won’t run for re-election in
2018. Illinoisans should never forget that their voices have power.
But if aggrieved
taxpayers don’t also demand fixes to underlying spending problems,
calls for additional tax hikes will return. And they’ll be stronger
than ever.
In Cook County, effective taxpayer advocacy means putting pressure
on commissioners to address a practically bankrupt pension system,
where the average career worker will receive about $2 million in
total benefits over the course of his or her retirement.
Hate the soda tax?
Of course, tell your commissioner. But also push for the county to
extend 401(k)-style retirement plans currently offered to state
university workers to its own workforce in order to begin an end to
the pension crisis.
Property tax bill higher than your mortgage payment?
By all means, shout it from the rooftops. But also call for local
government consolidation, limits to the extremely broad scope of
government union bargaining power, and reform of the state’s
prevailing wage laws, which overinflate the cost of public projects.
Fed up with yet another income tax hike without reform?
Call your state lawmaker. But also demand he or she stand up to the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which
is still pushing for huge raises for the highest-paid state workers
in the nation who also receive platinum-level health insurance at a
fraction of the cost.
It’s easy to rejoice in the defeat of an onerous tax.
What’s harder? Pushing for reforms needed to change the political
battlefield altogether.
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