No more tax hikes for RI County

Mark Lioen had the following droll letter printed in the March 13, 2015 Quad City Times. (..... marks paragraph breaks.) "In the concluding moments of the "Men in Black" film, one of the characters opens a locker door and is shocked to discover a universe of giant aliens walking around the small confines of our own Lilliputian world. It is akin to our local and state officials whose concentration on matters here in Illinois made them oblivious to the competition among states for businesses as well as competition for them in the wider world. ..... Once again, local officials have blithely placed a referendum question on the April 7 ballot concerning their desire to place a 1 percent sales tax on purchases made in the county in order to fund the maintenance of public school buildings. ..... As usual, they're outspending opponents in a frantic effort to reassure voters by means of push polls, i.e. phony polling designed to convince people to vote the way that those who fund the poll desire, that the money will be spent locally and only on building structures and not on salaries. ..... With the economy still in the doldrums and the onerous weight of existing taxes and regulations already driving local firms to close or move to other states, the question is whether we wish to augment their difficulties and ours by the imposition of yet another tax?"