Jim Dey: What voters said clear; why they said it unclear

Nov. 16—The campaign to pass a quarter-cent increase in Champaign County's sales tax looked like it had momentum.

Most of Champaign County's elected officials backed it.

County officials spent roughly $68,000 in taxpayer money to publicize it against no organized opposition.

Support for enhancing public safety has widespread support.

But the measure was swamped in the Nov. 5 election — 56,291 voting no against 29,336 in favor. That's a margin of 66 percent to 34 percent.

What happened? Opinions are mixed.

Republican county board member Jeff Wilson, who opposed putting the issue on the ballot, said his "gut feeling is that people were tired of being taxed."

"I actually was expecting it to fail," he said. "I had heard from various community members that they were going to do whatever it took to defeat it."

Champaign County State's Attorney Juila Rietz, a Democrat who supported the increase, said supporters "did not do a good job of explaining the need and what we were going to be using the money for."

She complained the county's sales-tax pitch was "pretty abstract."

The sales-tax hike was one of three tax increase proposals on the ballot. Two were summarily rejected by voters — the sales tax and a big property-tax increase sought by the City of Champaign Township.

The third — a property-tax increase for Mahomet schools — lost by a relatively narrow margin in a community that has repeatedly rejected school-tax hikes in past years.

Despite that, Champaign County Auditor George Danos said he does not "subscribe to the theory that there was" a widespread sentiment that "doomed all tax increases."

He noted that in Mahomet precinct 1, the sales tax "got 35% support, whereas the school district got 52%."

Danos suggested his challenge of the need for the sales-tax increase combined with financial figures showing ample county resources made the increase a hard sell.

But Republican board member John Farney dismissed that notion. He said it was a case of bad timing because "everything already costs more than it has in the past."

"Bad year to make the asks," he said.

Another contributing cause, Farney speculated, is that "right now there is not any type of interruption of services provided by the county."

"Until the public is directly affected, there isn't a motivating factor for the electorate to raise taxes," he said.

County officials didn't do themselves any favors when it came to winning the public's trust. There were widespread objections to the $68,000 in public expenditure on advertising. At the same time, the disclosure that county Treasurer C.J. Johnson lost more than $2 million in foregone interest income because of an investment lapse also was a setback.

The tax hike, which would have generated roughly $7 million in new money, was earmarked for public safety measures that included hiring more defense lawyers, prosecutors and sheriff's deputies. But skeptics noted money is easily reallocated.

The "public safety" aspect drew opposition from local Democratic state Rep. Carol Ammons. She publicly opposed the increase, asserting it would lead to more law enforcement focus on minorities.

Rietz cited Ammons' opposition as influential because some Democratic progressives followed her lead. But Farney contends Ammons' "late entry into the campaign was nothing more than self-centered publicity."

"Don't forget that things like the SAFE-T act, championed by Rep. Ammons, have negatively impacted the county budget and accelerated our financial peril," he said.

While local political actors suggested various reasons why the tax proposal was defeated, there is one undisputed factor.

Disagreement among local Democrats further divided already feuding factions of their party, setting the stage for further future acrimony.