Cook County’s sales tax will stand. That’s after a county commissioner withdrew her support from a measure to cut the tax.
Opponents of the sales tax hike that Board President Todd Stroger pushed through last year thought Tuesday was the day. They’d lined up the 14 votes needed to override Stroger’s veto of an ordinance to cut the tax by half-a-penny on the dollar.
SIMS: I’m going to remove my name as a sponsor on this amendment...
That is, tax opponents had the 14 votes, until Commissioner Deborah Sims changed her mind, nervous the cut could lead to the closure of health clinics in her district.
SIMS: We don’t have all of the information, and I don’t care how much everybody says we’ve got information. You can never get too much information, when you get two sides to a story, and around here things change from day-to-day and week-to-week.
This was the third time commissioners passed a sales tax cut and were unable to override a Stroger veto. Stroger says the consequences of the lost revenue would have been “dire.”