Normally, a tax hike would be the
last thing that state legislators would consider in an election year. Tax
increases are usually approved in "off years" to give voters time to
forget before they vote. So, you'd think that any talk of a large income tax
increase in Springfield would be the last thing being considered.
But the ever-growing likelihood that
US Sen. Barack Obama may very well end up as the presidential nominee is giving
Illinois Democrats hope that his presence at the top of the ticket will negate
any voter negativity associated with just about anything they do this year. And
one of the controversial items on the agenda for some of those Democrats is an
income tax increase.
A spokesperson for Senate President
Emil Jones confirmed last week that Jones is once again supporting an income
tax hike.
Last year at this time, Jones joked
with reporters that while Sen. James Meeks' income tax hike proposal wasn't
exactly dead, Jones would be assigning it to the "Hospice Committee"
and wouldn't allow a floor vote on the bill. Jones had long supported an income
tax hike for school funding and property tax relief, but he abandoned that
position last year in favor of the governor's gross receipts tax - which never
went anywhere - and adamantly refused to budge.
Jones' refusal to even consider the
income tax hike bill (SB 750) was roundly criticized by many of his own members
and was one of the many factors that drove a deep wedge in his caucus last
year. The Senate leaders' opposition doomed what many had considered the tax
hike's best chance of passage in a decade. The 2008 election was still far away,
business leaders were desperate to sign on to an alternative in the face of the
looming gross receipts tax and even many Republicans were quietly signaling a
willingness to consider the proposal.
Earlier this month, Sen. Meeks
quietly introduced a new income tax hike bill, SB 2288. The proposal would
raise money not only for schools and property tax relief, but also fund a
capital construction bill for roads, bridges, schools and mass transit. Unlike
last year's version, the new proposal would not slam newspapers with a tax
increase on ink and newsprint, and it stays away from a controversial service
tax.
Meeks said last week that he had
discussed his new proposal with Jones, but wouldn't say whether his leader
specifically supports the bill. Sen. Meeks opposes a casino gambling expansion
proposal to fund the capital bill, and he said that serious problems remain in
passing such a plan, so Jones may be open to an alternative. Jones pushed
harder for a gaming expansion plan last year than anything else - it was one of
the few "big" pieces of legislation that he convinced his hopelessly
divided caucus to support. But last week, Jones said an income tax hike could
pay for the capital plan.
Meeks and others seem hopeful that
some sort of arrangement can be made with Gov. Blagojevich, now that the
governor has broken his campaign promise with the mass transit bailout to never
sign a tax hike on "people." One income tax hike supporter, Sen. John
Cullerton, who is a co-sponsor of the new bill, has been joking for the past
few days that he would deliberately insert some typos into an income tax hike
bill so the governor could use his amendatory veto powers and therefore claim
he never "signed" it into law. The governor used those same powers on
the mass transit bailout bill to give senior citizens free rides, while
claiming he never actually signed the sales tax increase into law.
A spokesman for House Speaker
Michael Madigan said his boss wouldn't want to be the "Lone Ranger"
on a tax hike bill, but has talked about how small tax hikes would make more
sense for the capital program than gaming. "I would put him down as
willing to discuss it," the spokesman said about the speaker.
The governor has already announce
his opposition to the Meeks proposal and has said he will veto any income tax
hike. Of course, he said the same about the recent sales tax increase, which is
now law, so one never knows what the future might bring.
The tax hike is still a long shot,
but it's worth keeping an eye on.
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Rich Miller also publishes Capitol
Fax, a daily political newsletter, and thecapitolfaxblog.com.