Copyright Chicago Tribune
House Democrats in Springfield took a soccer ball Tuesday night and smashed it right in Joe Mansueto’s face. All in the name of raising an absurd amount of revenue from Illinoisans — seemingly as much as $2 billion — to address an ill-defined transit “fiscal cliff’ that not only is a mere fraction of what was initially advertised, by the transit agencies’ own admission, but clearly could be fixed through more efficient operations combined with modest amounts of new revenue. Mansueto, you may recall, is the Morningstar founder and benign billionaire (yes, Democrats, there are such folks) who generously is coughing up the cash for a spiffy new stadium for the Chicago Fire on a 62-acre brownfield, The 78, that Chicago badly needs developed. By way of offering their sincere thanks to Mansueto, a bill authored by Chicago Democrats Kam Buckner and Eva-Dina Delgado is dangling an absurd plan for a new statewide entertainment tax of 7%, plus a $5 ticket surcharge, which would kill the competitiveness of the struggling arenas and theaters in such suburbs as Schaumburg, Rosemont and Hoffman Estates, let alone threaten the viability of, say, a Soldier Field relying on live events for its post-Chicago Bears future. This tax could easily send Lollapalooza, and other festivals, packing. And it certainly would be a boon for the Milwaukee concert business. Or for developers in northwest Indiana or southwest Michigan with a concert venue on their minds. But that was not all. The House Democrats also concocted a novel, last-minute wealth tax that would tax Mansueto and other Illinois billionaires on their unrealized capital gains at the rate of 4.95% — not just an accounting nightmare but also an idea that would surely be challenged in court as unconstitutional. And when we say novel, that’s what we mean. While other blue states have mulled taxing the paper gains of their uber-wealthy residents, none have dared to do so. Illinois would be the very first. We don’t have that many billionaires left in Illinois (maybe a couple of dozen) after we chased so many of them away. One of those billionaires, Gov. JB Pritzker, would presumably have to stick around to stand up against this kind of craziness from the Democratic supermajority, but does anyone seriously believe that Justin Ishbia, to cite another billionaire of our acquaintance, is really going to stick around in a state with that uniquely punitive and uniquely targeted tax when he easily can take up residence in another state and still spend quality time in and around Chicago? Ishbia, we remind Springfield, in due course will be the owner of the Chicago White Sox; he currently is a minority shareholder. Ishbia has ties to Nashville, Tennessee, a city that would love to have the White Sox. Said new entertainment tax would be a huge burden on the Sox and its fans and a massive incentive for Ishbia, or anyone else, to take that struggling team to a city with far lower taxes. We are far from done. This cockamamie, eleventh-hour bill also raises the sales tax, which is not a burden restricted to billionaires; it would hike that levy on goods purchased in the city of Chicago to a staggering 10.5%. Coming on top of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s various proposed tax grabs, this would be disastrous for restaurants, small retailers and pretty much every Illinoisan. We’ve said before that Chicago deserves a world-class transit system. Down in Springfield, they want this revenue to help transit in the whole state, which is fair enough. We’re all for decent buses in Peoria. But let’s be honest here. The traffic gridlock is in Chicagoland and so is the bulk of the dysfunction and administrative overlap on the transit systems. This is the third largest city in the United States, and trains matter here. Metro Chicago is the place where the need is greatest and so is the waste. That is what Springfield has to sort through, and we don’t mean sort through by just coming up with every possible new tax idea that they think will only hit people of means but in actuality will hurt everyone at all income levels by vacuuming away much of the state’s economic activity. Think about it. Major events from our famed sports teams and at our superb concert venues are core to Chicago’s identity. They are why people move and stay here. Especially in Chicago, where there already is a burdensome 9% amusement tax on venues with more than 1,500 seats, another 7% off the top would be a killer for the city’s storied live entertainment industry. (Far better in our minds to have a modest surcharge for mass transit that would be applied to road tolls, a justifiable idea killed by unions that don’t want to stymie endless road reconstruction. But that is an editorial for another day.) And don’t even get us started on the state siphoning away half of the speed camera revenue that should be going to struggling small municipalities. By mid-morning Wednesday, Pritzker mercifully had signaled that the House bill is DOA, dryly noting there are a lot of “new tax ideas no one has seen before.” Ya think, Governor? Might we be so humble as to suggest to the House Democrats that they allow for a bit of debate on these new taxes that would send many Illinoisans packing. Just a smidgeon of contemplation. Instead, these folks apparently wanted to ram this through on deadline; standard political practice to forestall the opposition, arguably, but not defensible at this level of tax grab. Especially when it’s for transit, which is a problem but not an existential emergency for the state of Illinois. These days, Pritzker is like the last Roman holding off the barbarian invasion of the Democratic supermajority, which is showing its utter ineptitude at governance. This is why we have called for bipartisan fair maps at the state legislative level, more likely to produce moderate legislators on both sides and forestall these progressive fever dreams. The governor’s support for that has been as lukewarm as that from other publications. Maybe a rethinking is in order, not least on political grounds if Democrats want to make gains in the midterms. Otherwise Pritzker is just going to have to build a moat around Springfield to protect us from his own party. Clearly, the transit dilemma cannot be solved, as many hoped, during the veto session. A new Northern Illinois Transit Authority with the ability to combine fares and coordinate, say, Metra and CTA scheduling looks like something we could support on paper. But when you look really hard, you see that it doesn’t do much. Three rival service agencies would still exist. Bickering away. Protecting their corners. Sucking up taxpayer money. “Complete consolidation was going to be problematic for us and we knew that each of these agencies kind of had their own flavor,” Buckner said. Know what else is problematic, Rep. Buckner? New taxes on this scale. Not to mention that transit agencies shouldn’t be Baskin-Robbins. We need one governing body to sort out this mess. Period. Other metro areas manage that sort of consolidation; no reason we can’t. So it should be back to work on that part of the transit challenge too, Democrats. And, if this issue is kicked to the spring session (as we hope), no more of this hide-the-ball nonsense. Time for an adult conversation.
