Note to Guv: You Bought the Tax Hike

January 23rd, 2008 at 08:57am Aaron Chambers

Now comes word that Gov. Blago is pretending he vetoed a sales tax hike for Chicago and surrounding communities. I was on the road yesterday covering an aging murderer, so I’m playing a little catchup here. Anyway, here goes:

According to a report in the Quad-City Times, Blago insisted he actually vetoed the sales tax hike, which was the central component of a plan that lawmakers crafted to bail out Chicago-area mass transit agencies.

After the Moline event, though, Blagojevich distanced himself from the tax increase. “I didn’t (give in). I vetoed it. I rewrote the bill,” he said when asked if since he gave in on this tax increase he might do the same to get a capital construction bill passed.

Yes, the governor rewrote the bill in the sense he suggested the addition of a free-rides-for-seniorsplan. And yes, he did use his power of amendatory veto to facilitate that change to the bill. But he did not veto the tax hike. No, he did not veto the tax hike. (For background on the amendatory veto, go here.)

The original bill proposed a sales tax hike for Chicago and surrounding communities to generate more cash for Chicago-area transit agencies. The governor has long pledged to veto such tax hikes on “working people.” So before he accepted this one, he used an amendatory veto to propose additional language for the bill — language requiring mass transit agencies around Illinois to grant free rides to folks age 65 and older.

In doing so, the governor did not in any way propose altering the tax-hike language of the bill. You can read the governor’s veto message here. As you can see, he did not make any attempt to delete the tax-related language from the bill. Instead, he suggested adding his free-rides-for-seniors plan to the bill, while preserving the bill’s core tax hike.

Lawmakers then voted to accept the governor’s proposed change to the bill. Then just one step remained before the bill could become law: The governor needed to certify that the Legislature’s action complied with the intent of his veto. The governor did indeed certify the bill, as you may see at the bottom of this page. The bill then became law.

Entry Filed under: Taxes, Transit, Rod Blagojevich, Illinois politics