ABC TV Chicago reports:
The Cook County Board is in another deadlock over the budget. President Todd Stroger admits he doesn't have enough votes to pass his proposal for a massive county sales tax increase. So county commissioners are now considering cuts in programs and services. And, with tempers short, some of the rhetoric is getting nasty.I guess some Cook County Democrats think if you don't want to pay an 11% sales tax you are a racist.Maybe, Mr. Beavers is a racist since he wants to confiscate more money from African-Americans in the city of Chicago.Here more on the story.
The county board, according to Todd Stroger, is stuck, without enough votes to raise taxes or balance the budget by cutting $240 million in jobs, programs and services. That is raising the frustration level to the point where one of Stroger's top allies is saying, to the chagrin of his colleagues, that this is only happening because Stroger is black.
"It ain't playing the race card. You know it and I know it. Everybody knows thatr. If Todd was a white man, he wouldn't have half of these problems. You just don't want to commit it," said Commissioner Bill Beavers, (D) Stroger's floor leader.
Commissioner Beavers, who is Todd Stroger's floor leader and a former Chicago alderman, says the county budget battle reminds him of "council wars," when Ed Vrdolyak organized the white aldermen from the old Democratic machine to oppose a minority bloc aligned with Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington.
"Who's going to control the county?" said Beavers. "White or black? That's all it is."
Beavers is also accusing Republican Tony Peraica of "hating black people," whichm according to Peraica, is deplorable, totally untrue and a mischaracterization of what the budget battle is all about.
"To insert the element of race when the logic has failed, when they cannot get the votes together to pass this billion dollar tax increase, then it's a racial issue. This has nothing to do with race," said Commissioner Tony Peraica, (R) Riverside.
