Jim Tobin wants to make the members of the Illinois General Assembly more responsible for their actions when it comes to raising revenues. He thinks he’s got the vehicle in the Tax Accountability Amendment.
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“If this had been law last year, it would have stopped the June 30 tax massacre,” says Tobin. “In one day the General Assembly raised the income tax 20 percent for two years, raised the gasoline tax six cents a gallon to 19 cents, created a new sales tax on computer software, raised the cigarette tax 50 percent, gave themselves a $6,000 pay raise, and doubled Jim Thompson’s pension to $79,500 a year.” Of all the increases that session, only one–the computer-software tax–had 60 percent approval from the legislature. “If there had been two weeks’ notice of that one before it went into committee, they wouldn’t have been able to introduce it out of thin air, with no opportunity for discussion or opposition by taxpayers. That probably would have killed the software tax–which made 60 percent by three votes–if the computer lobby had known about it.”
The clause that limits terms on revenue committees is designed to keep members from getting too powerful and too beholden to special interests. Tobin points to state senator Dawn Clark Netsch, now the Democratic candidate for comptroller. “She was chairman of the senate revenue committee for ten years, and she’s voted for every tax increase since 1973. She has a campaign war chest that’s stuffed with dollars from the special interests she’s been raising taxes on behalf of all those years.”
Attorney Steve Merican, who wrote the amendment, replies, “I think we’re on pretty solid legal ground here. There’s no such thing as a black-and-white issue on anything that is constitutional. In Illinois we have a very limited right under the 1970 constitution to amend by referendum. There’s one exception to the rule: under Article 14 we’re allowed to change the structure and procedures [of the General Assembly]. The amendment must change both. We believe this amendment does that–the structural change is the formation of committees, the procedural change is the change in the procedure for passing revenue bills.”
Steve Brown, press agent for Michael Madigan, brushes TAA aside as “Tobin’s publicity stunt. It’s not a very practical approach to try to operate government.” Brown even once characterized Tobin and other proponents of TAA as “LaRouche-like” on a radio show.
“I know the name ‘accountability amendment’ doesn’t sound very sexy,” says Steve Merican. “But it is designed to discipline the legislature, because they won’t discipline themselves. They’re arrogant and not accountable to their constituency. It’s really the only hope for getting rid of the income-tax surcharge–once a tax is instituted, it just never goes away.”
