Legislative
Action

By DIANE ROSS

Mandamus and the multiplier

IF RAISING the income tax is to be the headlining act this spring and next, then killing the multiplier must have been the opening act last fall.

The neutralized multiplier promised to be the battle of the gov/pol stars. On one side were Gov. James R. Thompson, most of the Republicans in the General Assembly and, curiously, some of the Chicago Democrats — and the taxpayers, who generally support anything that purports to be relief from property taxes. On the other side were House Minority Leader Mike Madigan and Senate President Phil Rock, most of the legislative Democrats and the rest of those from Chicago — and the powerful lobbies who represent the local governments the taxpayers elect. They were all there, from the mighty Illinois Municipal League right up to the Illinois State Board of Education itself. As Reg Weaver, president of the Illinois Education Association (IEA), told The Daily Pantograph's Bernie Schoenburg: "When the IEA and the Illinois School Board Association join together to oppose legislation, you know that public education is in jeopardy."

The Chicago Democrats were divided. They'd called for the outright abolition of the multiplier: On Election Day voters in Cook County had passed such an advisory referendum two to one. Uphold the neutralized multiplier (the amendatory veto of H.B. 2485), and Thompson would get the credit for tax relief. Kill it, and the Chicago Democrats would get the blame for voting against their constituency.

Neutralizing the multiplier would have forced the local governments to apply the pressure necessary to move assessments closer to the one-third mark, or face the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax revenue. (See "The state of the State," October, p. 4.) But neither the taxpayers nor the lobbies for local government had had a chance to officially testify for or against the neutralized multiplier before the General Assembly took up Thompson's amendatory veto of H.B. 2485 last fall.

It was obvious that debate on the bill would feature confrontation politics, Illinois style, of the sort that hadn't been seen since Dan Walker left office. In the Republican House, which debated November 18, the unofficial vote was 89 yes, 78 no. The Republicans were hanging by their thumbs. The Democrats shook the tree. Enough votes fell off to kill the Thompson neutralized multiplier, but then the no votes started changing to yes. The official vote was 89 yes, 75 no. Thompson won by one vote. The General Assembly went home for Thanksgiving.

When the Democratic Senate took up H.B. 2485 on December 2, it was one of those occasions when every senator wanted to rise in debate (especially since the bill had never been "heard" in committee) — one of those occasions when the chair is forced to sit back and let the argument run its course. And the senators did, for once, debate. A couple of them finally lost their tempers. That doesn't happen often, but when it does, what the audience in the gallery and the reporters in the press box hear, is real not rhetorical, personal not partisan. It's as close to genuine deliberation as legislative politics ever gets.

Terry Bruce, a Democrat from downstate Olney, was against the neutralized multiplier. John Grotberg, a Republican from suburban St. Charles, was for it. As one of his colleagues observed, Grotberg was "the designated hitter for the second floor" that day; he opened and closed debate. Here's some excerpts.

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BRUCE: Now, the question comes, 'What's going to happen?' Fifty-eight counties. . . are going to have to raise their taxes 20 percent next year. . . . Forty-one are going to have to raise them by more than 40 percent. You believe they're going to do that? All of you who vote for this think they will. I don't believe it.

. . . .what you're doing with [H.B.] 2485 is predicting that a system that has years of poor administration, years of undertrained assessors, years of late tax bills — years of a patched-up, amended, changed system that goes back 200 years — that that system, within a period of 12 months, with a beacon shining from this Capitol dome, will strike responsibility into the heart of every assessor in the State of Illinois, and that next year, when he goes out with that book, he is going to do good. I don't buy it. . . .

You cannot mandamus a public official to do a discretionary act. You and I can stand here all day and try to assess this building. . . and we will never agree on what the Capitol Building of the State of Illinois is worth. You can't do it on your home or my home or on anyone else's home. When you say 'mandamus,' you mean that you are going to go out and tell that assessor a three-bedroom home on a lot 160 by 120 shall be assessed at $86,000 and you can't do it.

GROTBERG: Only once or twice have we referred to the people who have had it up to their necks with us, the legislature. Ten years I've been running, 12, and every day on the campaign trail. . . they blame us for the tax situation, for real estate. What the hell? We've never had anything to do with the real estate tax. You're going to sit there and take that heat?. . . . Holy

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mackerel, fellows on the other side of the aisle — Johnny D'Arco, two to one they wanted it abolished in your ward.

We've got to do it now. We've got to kill this thing before it has little ones, because the whole concept of the multiplier, the whole — (laughter) — I'm talking about killing the multiplier; we've got to kill it because it has been a cancer in the side of the taxpayer since 1870. . . . Are we going to come back with Band-Aids every time? Ten years of Band-Aids: I've got them up from my ankles to the top of my head.

I've been on the commissions as you suggested. We had a tax study commission last year, and I'm sure that you will remember it. We filed 27 bills, we studied it so carefully. Do you know what 26 of them did? They got more money quicker. That was the guts of that whole $10,000 or $20,000 of the taxpayers' [money] we spent hearing all those wonderful things. . . .

I'm reliably informed that there are county assessors and township assessors that have not assessed for 40 years. And yet we come down here and take this kind of heat as if we were imposing it? Let's put the monkey on the back of where it belongs — with 6,700 local units of government in the State of Illinois. . . .

I have told my local school officials, 'Bear with us because this General Assembly has a heart; it has knowledge; it has conscience' — we just look funny when you're in the balcony. But we'll be back here. We'll be back here on January the 11th. We're going to get through a Chicago election, I presume, before we do anything. But we will not let the schools go down the chute. . . . We will act responsibly and remedially. But the first thing we have to do is. . . get the sledge hammer and bam. Let's start with tax reform and start now.

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When the clerk took the record moments later, the Scoreboard locked at 25 yes, 29 no, 5 present, 0 not voting. The rollcall showed that seven Republicans had defected — but only three Chicago Democrats. The Democratic Senate had killed Thompson's neutralized multiplier.□

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