The good news: Michael Madigan and Pat Quinn do not yet have the votes to make permanent the “temporary” tax hike. Enough Democrats are standing their ground and holding to their promises, rather than buying Madigan’s line that keeping promises is for suckers (well, paraphrased).
They’re not giving up, though. The latest, according to today’s Tribune, is to create a budget reflecting the scheduled tax rate, in order to “pressure recalcitrant Democrats by showing them what they’ll be giving up if they don’t vote to make permanent what was billed as a temporary income-tax increase in 2011.” And, of course, you know this time-honored tactic will play the game of making the cuts the most punitive ones possible, to make the 5% rate appear unavoidable. (Small favors: in Illinois the property tax funding for schools works by determining the school district’s budget, with a population growth + CPI cap, then backing into a tax rate per household based on the assessments, rather than the fixed millage rate back in Michigan, which always meant the schools had to seek millage increases — and always played games of cutting arts and sports rather than administration.)
What’s really appalling is how dead set the leadership is on this 5% rate. Quinn’s plan includes a trade-off of “rebating” property taxes at the rate of $500 per household as a sweetener. Now the Tribune reports that Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook, has proposed that gas sales tax money be diverted to fund construction projects rather than going into general revenue — in other words, proposing that the state use a part of the “extra” revenue to fund more spending rather than avoid spending cuts.
Also in the news: the State Board of Elections is claiming that the “independent maps” redistricting amendment has too few valid signatures, a rate of 40% based on its initial sample, where the organizers believe they’re at the 60% level. Or, in the words of the e-mail sent to me as part of a mass distribution list:
This week, we saw the state running a rushed, uneven and behind-closed-doors signature validation process. The result of that flawed process was the inaccurate claim that we didn’t collect enough signatures.
It’s time for a fact-check: We have more than enough valid signatures to earn our rightful place on the ballot. We know our validity rate is above 60% because we conducted random samples on every petition that came in our door. Only a flawed review process from the State could have led to a result so biased against us, but now we are fighting back. Our field team is working hard to set the record straight by rehabilitating the supposedly “invalid” signatures.
Here’s some of what we saw this week:
· State Board of Elections staff encouraged validators to rush through review, with a supervisor in the Chicago office repeating the directive time and time again.
· The State Board failed to give staff instructions for how exactly to examine signatures. That meant each validator used his or her own criteria for determining if petition signatures matched. Consequently, we saw wide fluctuations in validity rates per validator.
· State Board of Elections staff reviewed numerous petitions after the close of business, and without notice to the Independent Maps campaign. It was literally a back-room process.
Broken government has led us to this point, but that’s exactly why this campaign is so crucial for our state. This fight is far from over, and we are confident we will make it to the November ballot.
This campaign will continue to stand up for the work that we all did over the past year and look forward to victory on Election Day.
Onward!
Michael Kolenc
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