Polls will be place for tax statement

Todd Stroger. Protector of the poor. Defender of the downtrodden.

Believe that and we've got about 1,000 square miles of political swampland in northeastern Illinois to sell you.

Yet, that was what Stroger would have us believe as he cynically announced his veto of the sales tax legislation Monday afternoon on a radio station in the heart of his political base on the South Side of Chicago and then followed up Tuesday before cheering workers at Provident Hospital, which he contends his veto saved.

If Stroger were ever to draw a line in the sand in the definition of his government, these actions and these locations described it. Here's where my votes are, he seemed to say, and here my cloak will not be challenged. Just try to stop me.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine that Stroger's veto can be overridden. The hyper-majority needed to override - 14 of the 17 possible votes, a ridiculous 80 percent requirement that the legislature is poised and ought to change - is an almost insurmountable challenge, even in a democratically operated governing body. In a political fiefdom like Cook County, it's a simple absurdity.

Ironically, Stroger chose recently to blame past county boards, the very boards who bowed to his father's whims and set up the system that now bends to his own, for the financial troubles he faces. And, he blamed an antagonistic news media for the image problems that plague his administration. If we'd all just leave him alone, he suggests, and quit "playing politics," he could manage just fine.

In fact, he said Tuesday, he's all for abating the sales tax increase by a quarter of a percentage point and maybe more "as funds become available." What that means, of course, only he can determine.

It's unfortunate that Stroger chooses to frame this battle as a struggle between the downtrodden poor and the indifferent affluent. It is not that. The people who are losing their jobs because businesses can't compete with lower sales taxes in neighboring counties also need health care, and the taxpayers and consumers who do have jobs are not indifferent to the legitimate needs of the county's poor.

Few outside Stroger's political base, however, believe the county board president has made anything beyond a token effort to stem the nepotism and patronage that have bloated county government into a $3 billion-plus Gargantua. So, his decision to hide behind that base as he announced and cheered his veto emphasizes the alternative his opponents face at the polls.

The Daily Herald has repeatedly reported that there are more registered voters among the interests most likely to oppose Stroger and other entrenched Cook County Democrats, but the machine candidates continually win because they get more voters to the polls.

So, while we perhaps must satisfy ourselves for the moment with .25 percentage-point sop out of all this, that shouldn't sway us from making a clear statement come November 2010.