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The Issue: Cook County officials are mulling utility
taxes and other taxes to raise revenue as they prepare
next year's budget.
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Daily Southtown Editorial
September 11, 2007
We say: Before asking citizens to dig deeper, the county
needs to eliminate waste, mismanagement and bloated payrolls.
Cook County Commissioner William "The Hog" Beavers
has declared an end to patronage in Cook County.
"There's no more patronage," Beavers said last week.
"The county has been cut to the bone."
No more patronage? Yeah, sure.
Beaver's pronouncement came amid the county's search for more
revenue to support next year's budget. An array of ideas has
been proposed. Many of them fall into the "Let's Stick
It To The Citizens for Our Inability to Be Fiscally Responsible"
file. In other words, taxes.
Beavers has proposed taxes on electricity and natural gas,
and he'll soon come up with a telecommunications tax. There
also are proposals for taxes on cigars and loose tobacco.
And officials reportedly also are considering increasing the
county's cigarette tax and sales tax.
Cook County Board President Todd Stroger apparently has given
his blessing to Beavers (or rather Beavers has ordered Stroger
to give him his blessing) to examine those taxes. A true leader
would tell Beavers to shelve those ideas for now. That same
leader would tell Beavers and the board to look within county
government for waste, mismanagement and bloated payrolls if
they are looking for places to find some revenue.
Fortunately, some commissioners, but not enough of them, already
are of that mindset.
Commissioner Forrest Claypool told the Southtown: "I
think the public would be willing to accept higher taxes for
public health and safety if they saw evidence that the county
had reformed itself, and there was no waste and fat. But I
don't see how you can go to the taxpayers now."
Commissioner Tim Schneider told the Chicago Sun-Times: "If
they spent as much time looking for places to cut waste and
improve efficiencies as they did looking for things to tax,
this government would be in better shape."
Indeed, levying more taxes provides an easy way out for a
government that's not used to being efficient. These proposed
taxes would hurt county residents' personal budgets. And the
poor would feel the impact more than the rich.
As we noted a month ago, the county did cut many health department
jobs earlier this year. In fact, the county cut too many highly-skilled
positions. Had it scrutinized other departments, it certainly
could have found ways to save money here and there without
having to slice the health department - arguably the most
important department - as much as it did.
A Sun-Times report during the weekend noted that while the
number of total county jobs decreased from 26,731 in December
to 24,815 in July, the number of jobs paying $60,000 or more
grew from 6,497 to 7,672. And the number of jobs paying $100,000
or more stayed about the same. That doesn't look like evidence
of comprehensive budgetary scrutiny to us.
As we also noted a month ago, more than 100 complaints from
county workers claiming they were victims of patronage were
filed between August 2004 and February 2007, according to
federal court documents. It is pretty clear the reports of
the patronage system's death, as declared by would-be medical
examiner Beavers, have been great exaggerated.
Until Beavers and his pals look more closely for areas that
can be cut within the current government, don't come at us
with any tax proposals.
