County reps: No tax hike
By KEVIN P. CRAVER - kcraver@nwherald.com
All five of McHenry County’s state legislators opposed tax increases floated at the end of the spring legislative session to staunch the flow of red ink from the state budget.
The county’s three state representatives were part of a clear majority that sank a House plan to temporarily raise the state income tax by 50 percent for two years. Its two state senators voted against an unsuccessful Senate plan to not only raise the income tax by 67 percent permanently, but also to apply the state sales tax to a wide range of services.
With one county resident in 10 out of a job, according to April statistics from the Illinois Department of Employment Security, local legislators said now was not the time.
“We’ve got almost 10 percent unemployment in McHenry County. We have employers that are no longer matching 401k, cutting benefits and staff, and instituting unpaid furlough days,” said state Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo. “There is real pain out there in the real world, and government hasn’t done anything to reflect that.”
Legislators passed a makeshift budget before adjourning Sunday that funds government agencies about 50 percent of Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan.
Quinn met with legislative leaders Monday to determine how to come up with a new budget that addresses an $11.6 billion deficit and staves off what Democratic leaders warn could be draconian cuts in services.
Franks and state Rep. Mark Beaubien, R-Barrington Hills, said that reforming the state’s bloated pension program and streamlining government, not taxes, were the keys to fixing the state budget. Beaubien said that taxpayers making sacrifices in a deep recession were not seeing the state doing the same.
“There have been no serious attempts to make cuts,” Beaubien said.
Although Democrats holds a supermajority in the Senate and are one seat shy of one in the House, they could not get a budget passed.
Beaubien, Franks and Rep. Mike Tryon, R-Crystal Lake, were among the 74 representatives who voted against the increase Sunday in the House. Forty-two Democrats voted for the increase, with 26 opposed and two voting present.
The day before, the Senate voted, 31-27 with one voting present, to increase the income tax by 67 percent. Five Democratic senators joined with the 22 opposing GOP votes, which included Sens. Pam Althoff, R-McHenry, and Dan Duffy, R-Lake Barrington.
The Senate plan also included imposing sales tax on dozens of services, such as travel agencies, laundry and dry cleaning, health clubs, sporting events and Internet service providers. But the House balked because Democratic leaders determined that it would not have the votes.
Doomsday scenarios aside, the impasse could affect the state’s $29 billion capital plan, which will be funded through increases in driver’s license and license plate fees and taxes on liquor and other products.
Quinn has said his signature approving the capital plan, the state’s first in more than a decade, was contingent on the approval of a full-year budget. He said lenders would be unwilling to loan the state the money with billions of dollars of budgetary uncertainty.
Tryon said he was glad that the senate plan failed, which he said was even worse than the unpopular gross receipts tax proposed in 2007 by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The ongoing meetings between Quinn and legislative leaders are encouraging, he said, but should have taken place long ago.
“I wouldn’t want to be Gov. Quinn, inheriting the mess that he inherited and having such a limited time frame, but you have to sit down and figure out what people are willing to do,” Tryon said. “You have to look internally before you set out to raise taxes.”
Franks said there was one upside to the makeshift budget approved last weekend – it was balanced.
“That’s the first time we’ve done that in a long time,” he said.
