Dupage Policy Journal

Margot Day smells a rat. A rather large, well-fed yet still hungry one.

Day, a Burr Ridge resident and business owner, said she has serious doubts about the threat posed to the state and country by the COVID-19 pandemic. It derailed a discussion of property tax reform in Springfield this year, and she doubts it was a coincidence.

“I do support property tax relief, and that was before the excuse of COVID-19 was used to destroy the economy,” Day told DuPage Policy Journal. “If we are not allowed to practice or carry on business, this has a direct impact upon the value of commercial and industrial property, so it naturally follows that we who own commercial property and have been restricted from using our property to generate income should receive a rebate at least commensurate to the length of time we were forced to go non-operational.”

She said if businesses are denied full use of their property for three months out of the year, they should receive a 25 percent reduction of their tax bill, 33 percent for four months and so on.

“Of course this formula does not take into account the damage done to businesses, particularly businesses that have temporal inventory,” Day said. “When an airplane leaves the ground, any unsold seats are inventory that can never be sold again. The value of their unsold inventory is zero. Same for vacant hotel rooms, empty tables at restaurants, and all attendant businesses like travel agents, food suppliers who service exclusively restaurants, etc.”

Business does not like surprises; it thrives on stability, Day said, adding that incalculable damage has been visited upon U.S. business, particularly in Democratic-run states.

“Meanwhile, we have seen government employees and recipients of government largesse such as disability, Section 8 housing and so forth — the welfarian sector — who have experienced no interruption of income or security, receive the same $1,200 Band-Aid as the waitresses and bartenders who are financially devastated by this unprecedented circumstance,” she said. “Surely to receive the government goodies there is a Social Security number on file that could have excluded these particular unharmed citizens from receiving the latest handout.”

With government being the largest employer in Illinois, that would be a very large number of ineligible windfall recipients, Day said.

“Homeowners are reeling when they open their property tax bills,” she said. “And if you break it down, as I did, it is the schools and the pensions that are doing it. Why cannot the public sector unions operate the same way that the private sector does?”

Day said when she talks with teachers, they worry that the state is squandering their pension funds.

“I tell them, ‘The rest of us were forced to put in 15.3 percent, 7.65 percent out of our paycheck and the silent match by the employer of 7.percent,’” she said. “And the federal government has been just as profligate with our Social Security money — and look how much was paid in.”

These calculations are lost on the general public, unless they are business owners or CPAs, in Day’s view. She said unions were formed, they were intended to protect people in dangerous occupations.

She said President Franklin D. Roosevelt — whom she dubs “the original American socialist” — was opposed to public sector unions. With unions representing private companies, if their costs grew too high, customers could go elsewhere and the company could declare bankruptcy, ending the union contract.

“This was abrogated by the Barack Obama administration with the reorganization of General Motors,” Day said. “They ignored American contract law and put the vendors and creditors behind the unions and preserved the union contracts before any other creditor was made whole. More instability ... the enemy of business.”

She said there are few government employees in her circle of friends and many people she knows who own businesses or work in the private sector are leaving the state or considering it.

“The general populace does not connect the dots between the public sector unions and their property tax bill,” Day said. “The unions are very polished at making their people understand what is at stake for them — it is a much easier narrative to understand with a much more direct impact. But I will say this: Even the Democrats I know are not happy with their tax bill.

“At least we should do what New York City does. If you have a city pension and you leave, your pension is reduced by 20 percent. There are plenty of these young retirees living in lower-tax states — someone like Adam Andrzejewski should do some forensic accounting on how many of those retirement checks go to an out-of-state address or bank.”

Day said she is tired of the state’s political process, which she views as terribly corrupt.

“We have confirmation that the ward bosses have total control — how else does a state elect a dilettante billionaire [as governor] whose personal economic claim to fame is having removed 13 toilets from one of his mansions so he could skate on over $300,000 in Illinois property taxes?” she asked. “And I have nothing against billionaires — but why did his dream vanity job have to be governor?  Ah — it didn’t — remember when he wheedled former Gov. [Rod] Blagojevich on a tape-recorded line for a government gig?”

Day said Gov. J.B. Pritzker should be mocked as “Governor Toilet Yank” and people need to be aware of the juxtaposition of his actions versus his plan to introduce the graduated income tax to Illinois by changing the Illinois Constitution.

She said that was not allowed when Gov. Bruce Rauner tried to correct the pension problem.

“He — and all Democrats need to be shown for the hypocrites that they are,” Day said. “He and other Democrats need to be exposed. How does [Speaker] Mike Madigan get away with having a property tax appeals law firm, when he is in effect forcing the taxes higher and higher by his demonic alliance with the unions? 

“Someone very erudite needs to explain all this to the tired, overworked busy populace and frankly, your neighbor who is a public sector worker needs to be shamed for his/her greed. We no longer practice shaming for anything short of Republicanism, but this is embezzlement, practiced on a huge scale, as they steal our equity to sate the bottomless union coffers.”