There’s something to be said for the power of incumbency.
That might explain this week’s release of a report issued by Gov. Jim Edgar’s Department of Revenue lauding Edgar’s 1991 push for property-tax caps in the collar counties and claiming that they have saved taxpayers $300 million.
“The Property Tax Extension Limitation Act was enacted in the summer of 1991, fulfilling a campaign pledge of newly elected Gov. Jim Edgar,” the report says on its first page.
Mike Klemens, a spokesman for the Department of Revenue, acknowledged that the agency has no direct role in implementing the property tax-cap law but said the department is charged with “an overall supervision of the property-tax system in Illinois.”
Klemens denied any political motivations in the timing of the report, calling its analysis “fairly straightforward.” He said it was prepared at “no additional cost” to taxpayers.
But with Edgar pounding away at Democratic challenger Dawn Clark Netsch’s plan to boost income taxes for schools, there was little doubt the report was aimed at boosting the governor’s support among taxpayers in the GOP-rich suburbs.
Getting nastier: Meanwhile, Edgar fired back at Netsch with new TV ads accusing her of “hiding the facts, hiding from issues, hiding behind negative TV.”
The new ads continue a trend of early negativism in both camps’ TV (and, in Netsch’s case, radio) ads.
The Edgar ad is a response to ads that Netsch started Friday, calling recent problems at the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority “Jim Edgar’s tollway scandal.”
Edgar’s new ad states: “Dawn Clark Netsch wants to abolish the death penalty. And Netsch has a plan to increase the income tax by 42 percent. Instead of telling you her plans, she runs negative ads attacking Jim Edgar’s integrity.”
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Netsch spokesman Peter Giangreco said he actually was pleased by Edgar’s new ad because, he said, it shows that the tollway issue has become an issue that Edgar must address.
Smell the roses: Call it the Rose Garden strategy.
Cook County Commissioner John Stroger, the Democratic candidate for County Board president, jetted Tuesday to Washington to watch President Clinton sign the federal crime bill into law at the White House.
But Stroger’s Republican opponent for president, Joseph Morris, was unimpressed.
“We have not heard from Commissioner Stroger, despite 24 years of service on the Cook County Board, a serious set of plans or proposals for addressing the problems of crime and violence in Chicago and Cook County,” Morris said.
With law enforcement a primary duty of county government-responsibilities from the jail to the court system account for nearly one-third of the $2.1 billion county budget-crime is expected to again be a major focus of the campaign for board president.
Stroger won a tough Democratic primary in March with a campaign focused almost exclusively on crime. Yet his proposals amounted to little more than extensions of programs planned or already in place.
But Morris is advancing his own conservative agenda, which includes programs not likely to make it beyond campaign press release.
For instance Tuesday, he again called for a new 1,000-bed juvenile detention center that would triple the size of the current facility. Morris also suggested alleviating overcrowding at County Jail by putting prisoners on barges, a plan that started as a tongue-in-cheek proposal.
Stroger was unavailable for comment Tuesday. But Andrea Brands, his campaign spokeswoman, called the Morris proposals “a grab bag of ideas. It makes for great theater, but not great government.”