By Jake Sheridan
Chicago Tribune
(TNS)
Chicago voters overwhelmingly supported new taxes targeting millionaires Tuesday, according to unofficial election results.
The advisory ballot question is non-binding. But City Hall leaders immediately noted the broad consensus the measure established and quickly set out to use the results to pressure their opponents.
The millionaire tax referendum results show Chicagoans want to see tax-the-rich policies, Mayor Brandon Johnson argued in an interview with the Tribune Wednesday morning. He tied the vote to his own ongoing push for taxes targeting large corporations to be added to the city’s budget.
Around 80% of Chicago voters backed both a countywide proposal to hit millionaires with a 3% surcharge to fund property tax relief and education and another ballot question asking if millionaires should be taxed more to fund schools.
“This is an overwhelming support,” Johnson said. “What it says is that these communities support taxing the wealthiest as well as taxing corporations as a way to make critical investments.”
Flashing his willingness to press individual aldermen on the issue, Johnson brought up another referendum question that appeared in a handful of precincts across the city to asking voters if they supported a tax on corporations with over 500 employees “in order to fund youth jobs, public mental healthcare and violence prevention services.”
He likened the question to his own City Council push for a corporate head tax and urged reporters to ask how Ald. Monique Scott, 24th viewed the results from several precincts she represents.
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Asked at City Hall about 88% of voters supporting the tax, Scott said the “working class” should get a say, but argued voters had failed to foresee the consequences of taxing the rich.
“I’m sure when you say to a poor community, ‘a millionaire tax,’ that already puts the community on a defense, because it’s the lesser, we’re the lesser,” she said. “But when you think of it from a business perspective, it is for me a job killer, it is for me somewhat of, you’re punishing people for being successful.”
Scott brushed off the result by saying the question had not been properly explained to voters, warning that city leaders “don’t have the facts” about the tax burden already hitting millionaires and billionaires. She said City Hall should instead use spending cuts to balance its budget, but did not clearly identify what she believes must be cut from Johnson’s proposed spending plan.
And if Johnson hopes to use the results to pressure aldermen to support taxes against the city’s wealthiest residents and businesses, he should feel pressure to reinstate gunshot detection technology, Scott added.
“One doesn’t go without the other, right?” she said.
Over 72% of voters backed restarting the use of gunshot detection technology, election results showed Wednesday afternoon.
—Tribune reporter Alice Yin contributed.
Photo credit: Chicago Board of Election Commissioners/Facebook
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