Quinn passes the buck on cell-phone tax hike, Chicago cashes in

Back on June 6, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation authorizing Chicago city officials to enact a 56 percent per-line 911 fee hike. This measure gave the city of Chicago the authority to raise the city’s per-line 911 fee to $3.90 from the old fee of $2.50. It didn’t take long for Chicago City Council...

Back on June 6, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation authorizing Chicago city officials to enact a 56 percent per-line 911 fee hike.

This measure gave the city of Chicago the authority to raise the city’s per-line 911 fee to $3.90 from the old fee of $2.50. It didn’t take long for Chicago City Council to cash in on this new source of revenue – city officials approved the fee hike on July 30.

Before the hike, Illinois’ cell-phone tax rate was higher than every neighboring state. Now, as the Chicago Sun-Times notes, a family with four cell phones and a land-line will pay $84 more in taxes every year.

The measure will also increase the tax on prepaid wireless phones to 9 percent from 7 percent.

When Quinn signed off on the hike, there was speculation that this stopgap measure simply allowed the city to delay a dreaded property tax hike until after election season. Some analysts pointed to the fact that the extra money raised could even be siphoned off to fund pensions. That speculation has become reality.

The odds that these fees will do anything but stave off the inevitable are slim. Chicago is broke. Nickel-and-diming families on their phone bills won’t help much.

Chicago aldermen and state lawmakers need to have a serious conversation about reform before they continue raising fees, cutting services or hiking taxes yet again.