Candidates for Hanover Park president debate bringing back 1% municipal grocery tax

Both candidates for Hanover Park village president see a different answer to the question of how to address the state’s decision to stop imposing a 1% grocery tax on municipalities’ behalf now that each has the authority to have its own.

Incumbent Rod Craig, who’s held the office for 18 years, is being challenged by Mark Elkins, a 30-year member of the Hanover Park Park District’s board of commissioners and its current president.

Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill last August eliminating Illinois’ grocery tax at the end of 2025. The state allowed cities and villages more than a year to consider enacting their own in time to take effect on Jan. 1, 2026.

Elkins believes a Hanover Park grocery tax creates a hardship for the average resident, while its absence could attract shoppers from elsewhere.

“This is a huge opportunity to create relief for people,” he said. “As small as it may be, we already have a luxury tax on prepared foods and things.”

But Craig said the village’s needed services are so dependent on the grocery tax revenue, that losing it will have to be made up elsewhere, probably property tax.

“If we had to make up for $600,000 to $700,000, I’d have to go out and raise taxes on homeowners 7%,” he said. “I’m not going to do that. And so the smart thing is to keep things as they are. The board will make that decision this fall.”

Elkins doesn’t dispute the need for revenue, but believes consumers will use the savings to purchase other taxable goods.

“So that, in being spent differently, we’d make up for it in other areas without having to raise property taxes,” he said.

Craig, however, argued the course he envisions creates no disruption from the perspective of either the resident or the village.

“Instead of the governor collecting it, it’s going to be the municipalities, which will still go through the state on the collection part,” he said. “It’s a revenue source we just can’t walk away from.”