 The Illinois House will consider a tax hike on cigarettes from 98
cents per pack to $1.98 per pack.The Illinois Senate passed the
cigarette tax increase proposal last April by a vote of 30-26, and
the vote in the House could be just as close.
Kathy Drea with the Illinois Lung Association said the proposal
could bring in $300 million, which could be leveraged for more funds
from the federal government and free up money for other state
operations, such as education.
According to the proposal, the money from the tax increase would
go toward a fund specifically for state health care providers.
But lawmakers on state border districts are concerned that their
gas stations and convenience stores will lose business because
residents will go to other states to purchase their cigarettes.
State Rep. Pat Verschoore, D-Milan, has businesses in his Quad
Cities district that have already been hit hard by the recession.
"We're on the border of the state of Iowa, and if they raise it
$1 a pack, it would put us at a disadvantage ... and my fear is that
it will take business from the businesses on the Illinois side," he
said.
State Rep. Jil Tracy, R-Quincy, also lives in a border district
and is concerned about the proposal's effect on businesses in her
area.
But she also is opposed to the tax increase because she doesn't
think it will deter people from smoking.
"Human nature is, (smokers) are going to go out of state to get
these (cigarettes)," she said. "That's not the way I like to
legislate -- require behavior modification, enforcing things on
people that they don't want to do."
During the Senate vote, most Chicago-area Democrats were in
support of the proposal, while Republicans and border-district
lawmakers stood in opposition.
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 Drea said that a poll conducted by the American Lung
Association indicated that Illinois voters favored the cigarette tax
as a way to close the state's massive budget shortfall.
"We recently did a statewide poll of registered voters, and 74
percent of registered voters in Illinois support the cigarette tax.
And they were polled on many different revenue enhancements for
Illinois, and cigarette tax was the number one most popular solution
to the current budget crisis," she said.
Among the other choices presented in the poll were increasing the
personal income tax, increasing vehicle registration fees, reducing
funding for road and highway construction, and reducing funding for
public education.
But state Rep. Jack Franks, D-Woodstock, said a tax increase on
cigarettes was not an appealing proposal, given the state's budget
troubles.
"The problem is we just keep throwing more money at our problems
instead of looking at how we can redo our budget," he said.
Lawmakers could not pinpoint a specific day or time when they
would vote on the cigarette tax, contained in
Senate Bill 44.
[Illinois
Statehouse News; By KEVIN LEE]
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