Stroger, Cook County get money for future

Chicago Tribune
By Hal Dardick and Robert Becker | Tribune staff reporters
March 2, 2008

Budget fight ends with sales-tax hike that angers many

Oh, what a difference a percentage point makes.

Only a year ago, County Board President Todd Stroger was lopping bodies from the county payroll and closing health clinics as a way to heal a gaping budget deficit.

Along the way, he garnered a measure of goodwill from political opponents and showed signs of instituting some of the reforms he had promised in his bid to succeed his father -- the late John Stroger -- as the board president.

Now with the bitter passage early Saturday of a measure that more than doubles the county sales tax -- to 1.75 percent from 0.75 percent -- Stroger has the cash to hire more than 1,000 new employees and close the county's projected $234 million deficit.

The new budget was approved on a 10-7 vote shortly after midnight Friday, avoiding the need for court action to keep county government offices open. Perhaps more importantly for Stroger, the new revenue likely negates the need for the county to seek additional tax hikes before 2010, when he is expected to seek re-election.

The new tax increase, which confers the dubious honor on Chicago of having the highest sales tax -- 10.25 percent -- of any major U.S. city, will add about $426 million annually to the county's coffers.

But Stroger's victory was not complete.

Stroger settled for a smaller sales-tax increase than he originally sought. He also agreed to place the Health Services Bureau under some form of outside control for three years. Critics also say in the process, which was often marred by bitter personal attacks, that Stroger lost some of his credibility as a manager by raising taxes rather than instituting reforms.

"As a result of a lack of a reasonable financial plan we're going to raise taxes and jeopardize the economic vitality of the Chicago region," said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a fiscal watchdog group.

Msall said the county's increase is four times greater than the sales-tax increase granted to the CTA, which agreed to a series of "comprehensive and historic" reforms.

"There is no reform tied to this," said Msall. "There is nothing here the taxpayers can look forward to. ... Nothing in this budget that gives the Civic Federation confidence that the millions collected [under the tax increases] are going to be spent any differently than the other $3 billion in the budget."