What happens when some of Illinois’ most prominent special-interest groups band together to push for a tax increase? One of the state’s largest and newest lobbying groups is about to find out.
The Responsible Budget Coalition, a growing cadre of leaders from education, labor and other public- and private-sector fields, has become a major force as the state enters yet another troublesome budget session.
Launched in the fall, it seeks to augment what its members call an inadequate state budget that has left social-service providers and others in the lurch — especially as those they serve, crippled by a global economic crisis, need their help the most.
Last week, Gov. Pat Quinn called for a one-percent tax increase to avoid education cuts. The coalition is pushing for more.
Its backers include unions like AFSCME and SEIU, along with the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.
“We have been chronically unable to pay for the promises we’ve made,” says John Bouman, the Shriver Center’s president. “What drives the budget deficit is an antiquated, unfair revenue system, as well as the recession.”
He says the coalition began as response to last year’s budget session, when Springfield legislators declined to raise the state’s 3 percent personal income tax.
In September, more than 90 groups kicked off the coalition with a rally in Chicago. Last month, its member organizations had more than doubled, and more than 1,000 demonstrators showed up at Springfield’s capitol rotunda during the coalition’s most recent protest.
Rallies are only part of the group’s work, however.
Bouman says the group is funded through its member organizations, which donate in kind with professional lobbying and other in-house services. He estimates that, in all, the coalition’s members have spent about half a million dollars in services related to pushing for a tax increase.
The costs include sending lobbyists to Springfield and legislative districts with lawmakers who have not yet supported a tax increase. About a dozen of the coalition’s member organizations have professional lobbyists on their payroll, Bouman says.
On its Web site, the coalition also wages an information campaign that includes a blog and carefully selected headlines — among them, news of teacher layoffs, rising college tuition, and cuts to local services.
The audacity of the coalition’s mission — to ask Illinois taxpayers for more money as they, too, struggle with the recession — strikes directly at political fears that higher taxes are as unpalatable to voters as they are perilous to those who call for them.
“The conventional wisdom about this being politically dangerous is, at best, overblown — and maybe completely wrong,” Bouman says. “If you look at the recent primary, very few of the Senate people who actually voted for and passed a significant revenue bill suffered for it.”
That, however, does not mean that the voices against a tax increase have withered in Springfield.
Joe Calomino, president of the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, says the coalition is framing the budget discussion in unduly urgent terms, failing to acknowledge underlying problems with spending.
“We’re playing games,” Calomino says. “How can we fix a problem if we don’t even know the depth of the problem?”
Calomino, a former official in Republican gubernatorial administrations, has been pushing for a bill that would change the state’s accounting practices to include accrued debts.
The bill is intended to highlight what state officials have known for years: A constitutional requirement to balance the budget annually hasn’t yielded fiscal responsibility.
“We’re using a myriad of accounting tricks,” he says. “Our bill is calling for a full disclosure of the state’s true financial condition. What the state’s done is failed to incorporate long-term debt with the budget.”
Last month, the Civic Federation, a nonprofit and nonpartisan budget watchdog widely cited by business groups, concluded that, in addition to passing pension reforms and spending cuts, Illinois lawmakers should increase the state’s income-tax rate.
“The scope of the state’s fiscal crisis requires a combination of remedies,” according to the Civic Federation’s report. “The problem is too large to be solved solely by budget cuts or tax increases.”
The quagmire has led some prominent individuals, such as Democratic former Illinois Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch, to join the coalition.
Netsch says that while some opposition groups and conservative legislators are quick to criticize a tax increase, she sees no way around it — even if tax-weary Republicans take helm of the state.
“It would serve them right to win the governorship and try to get us out of this mess without any kind of tax increase,” Netsch says. “I don’t know what you do when you get a state that is absolutely broke and with absolutely no will, at least in some quarters, to do anything about it.”
Bouman says progress for the coalition is coming slowly, but that there are indications of its success. He says that despite previous reservations, some state legislators have privately promised to support tax increases during meetings with coalition lobbyists.
“Momentum is building,” Bouman says. “We’ve moved the ball slightly, but we’re not there yet.”