Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle wants to bring back the very same penny-on-the-dollar sales tax that she criticized in campaign commercials on her way to ousting incumbent Todd Stroger in the 2010 Democratic primary.
And her about-face raises an interesting question — Was Stroger right?
On Tuesday, I caught up with former county president — once the Chicago media’s No. 1 punching bag who’s now a hired hand for 20th Ward boss Howard Brookins — to ask if he thinks Preckwinkle’s sales-tax backpedal proves the evil “Stroger Tax” as she called it was the right move all along.
“Why, yes it does,” Stroger said. “I do feel vindicated.”
In pitching what might as well be called the “Preckwinkle Tax” — a move that would boost the county’s sales-tax take by 1 percentage point — the current Cook County boss told commissioners the increased revenue would help fund worker pension obligations and balance next year’s budget, according to published reports.
“I think she finally came to the realization that my [sales tax hike] proposal was not just patching a budget hole we were in. It was also to try to fix the government and make sure we could move forward in a better position. But that got lost in the headlines about the 'Stroger Tax.' " he said.
"Back then, we got reports … and were worried about the future and the structural deficit and it was clear we had to make structural changes and we needed to raise money so down the line we weren’t in a fiscal crisis. I don't think everyone ever got the point of what we were trying to do.”
Stroger says Preckwinkle’s new push for the sales tax hike proves that the key issue in his re-election loss was all politics and no substance.
He pointed to Preckwinkle’s best campaign ad where Ben Franklin makes a cameo appearance as she promises to "repeal the whole Stroger Sales Tax."
“Having Ben Franklin and talking about cents and time, that was a very clever commercial. I can’t say it wasn’t,” Stroger said. “But it didn’t actually speak to the truth of the matter. But not many campaign commercials do.”
The former county boss said the reasons the county needed the sales tax hike never got fully reported because the “newspapers” had a target on his back.
“They weren’t going to listen to me no matter what,” Stroger said.
"The attacks were all about Todd Stroger. It was all about me and why I shouldn't be president because I'm Todd Stroger and not about how the government needed to run. ”
For a while, I was one of the reporters taking aim at Stroger and, frankly, the guy made himself an easy mark thanks to his inner circle.
He surrounded himself with bumbling relatives, inept childhood pals and an assorted collection of fools who regularly found ways to embarrass their boss by making budget mistakes, running their mouth, getting themselves thrown in county jail and other ridiculous things that made front-page headlines and distracted from Stroger’s policy decisions.
Stroger says he knows that it hurt his ability to convince voters that he had their best interest in mind and “acted as a good shepherd of the people’s money.”
“If I did anything wrong it was that I didn’t find a strong enough voice to get my message out across the county,” he said.
Stroger said his message regarding the unpopular sales tax hike was, “we needed more money to keep the government solvent.”
And it’s a truth he suspects Preckwinkle learned the hard way.
"You don’t really know until you’re actually president how many moving pieces you’re dealing with [regarding the budget]," Stroger said.
“It’s clear [Preckwinkle] came to the realization that whatever the rhetoric was [about the sales tax hike] the county needed the money. Her administration always needed the money. This isn’t their first tax and fee hike they’ve tried to push through,” Stroger said. “And they couldn’t get it in any other fashion.”
I asked Preckwinkle's spokesman the same question I asked Stroger: “Was Todd Stroger right?"
“The decision to roll back the sales tax was the correct one at that time,” Frank Shuftan replied.
I fired a back a quick follow up query, “So, now Todd Stroger is right?”
“That’s not at all what I said,” Shuftan replied.
Then, I let it drop.
After all, Stroger told me given the chance he wouldn’t take personal jabs at Preckwinkle for flip-flopping on the sales tax hike she vilified him over in 2010.
“I don’t fight about that politics stuff,” he said. “People do things that are political. If you’re gonna cry about that, you’re gonna cry all the time.”
And apparently, Stroger isn't crying about the political beating he took from Preckwinkle five years ago. He's got his sights set on running for a seat on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation Board in 2016.
"I was running for the water reclamation board before all this came out," he said.
"They can say I had a bad showing in the last election but I still got 100,000 votes. And if I can do that I don't mind putting myself out there again."
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