Guest post by Ann Lousin, Professor of Law at John Marshall Law School in Chicago, based on an email she sent in.
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What is the biggest problem facing Illinois? How about the lack of leadership and followership? Leaders unwilling to speak truth to the citizens and citizens unwilling to face reality. One of the most seminal insights I learned years ago in government was that 1) everybody wants more services, but for less money; and 2) everybody wants more rules (laws) but only if they’re enforced against others, not the “everybody.” (The “I can do what I want” attitude.)
Ask your neighbors: Do you want the state to provide more funding for our schools? Upon hearing the answer yes, ask if they’re willing to pay more taxes for it. Expect to hear a no, followed by “somebody else should pay for it.” Harry Truman and Everett Dirksen had a saying: ”Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax the fellow behind the tree.”
Remember Sheila's shock when her affluent North Shore neighbors were opposed to the cutting the budget of the Illinois Arts Council if that meant that the North Shore would suffer? She had assumed the affluent community was providing full support for its symphony, not getting any money from the state.
Dave Kohn at the Union League Club of Chicago says Congressman John Porter used to carry around a letter from a constituent decrying the “big federal budget,” and then listing paragraphs of things that the constituent insisted could not be cut.
Ask your neighbors: ”Do you think there ought to be law against abortion?” Then when the neighbor says yes, ask if a 16-year-old girl who has had an abortion because she was pregnant out of wedlock ought to be arrested and prosecuted for murder? Almost everyone, including members of the pro-life movement, knows a girl who “got in trouble.” When you put a face on a problem, it’s a different problem—and a different solution. Nobody really, really wants to send that girl to prison, yet that is the natural result of abortions being “illegal.”
You get the idea; you once worked for the Federal Reserve. You know that we are all ambivalent about interest rates: I want to pay low interest on my mortgage and get high interest on my bank account. This is human nature.
I’ve been on my condo board off and on. It’s the same thing: lower assessments, but provide more services! Stop people from using the pool after 11 p.m., but let me use it if I happen to come home after midnight and need to cool off!
The last Illinois governor who really laid it on the line about revenue was Richard Ogilvie, and every politician I knew then learned the lesson of 1972. Ogilvie used the new income tax to increase state aid to local districts for school funding—and the teachers’ unions supported his opponent in 1972. The Save our Suburbs/Save our State group, precursors of the Tea Party, never forgave him for the income tax, but they were delighted to take the increased school aid.
(BTW I’ve told you how the state could raise $1 billion a year. When I give talks on the subject to public employees and retirees, I lay it on the line and say we’ll have to tax pensions, at least on the part of pensions higher than $40,000 a year. I say we have to raise the money and that’s it. Of course, that is not popular, but some people come up afterwards and say they know I’m right. BUT they say they don’t want to say so publicly. And do you hear any candidate talk about taxing pensions with a $40K exemption?)