RTA Gas Tax Will Make Someone's Day

I can hardly believe that George Ranney, one of the Regional Transportation Authority’s original promoters, is advocating the same RTA gas tax that was included in the original legislation.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," as George Santayana put it so well in 1905.

So, go ahead.

Re-enact the RTA gas tax.

Make it 5%.

Apply it to the state and federal Motor Fuel Tax portion of the price of gasoline, too.

15 cents or more a gallon.

And, why not suggest the repealed parking tax, too?

You will create another suburban Cal Skinner.

I hope he or she has as much fun killing a new RTA Gas Tax as I did the original one.

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After I wrote this article I remembered that Ranney was the designated spokesman for the RTA Citizens Committee for Better Transportation in the last radio debate on the subject. It occurred the Friday before the RTA referendum was barely (and maybe not) passed (no recount allowed in an entirely paper ballot and less than a 13,000 vote margin with obvious fraud). We were at a little FM station in some older Chicago high rise. By then I had my sound bites down pat.

As we reached the elevator after the recording, Ranney said, "If we had known we would have so much trouble with McHenry County, we would have left you out."

My response: "Now you tell me!"

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And, yes, that's a picture of one Cal Skinner, Jr., showing a bit of what the House Chambers looked like in the late 1970's. Huge stacks of bills, if you wanted to have a chance of being able to figure out what was going on beyond the Legislative Digest. And some of us were a lot thinner.

There is always more at McHenry County Blog, including news of a soon-to-be 500-employee company that could move out of Illinois to Wisconsin but is not--just out of Crystal Lake.