Scott Reboletti

“I wish I could afford to pull all the toilets out of my house so I could afford the property taxes.

“In January, we listed our house at $31,000 less than we paid for in 2006. Right now it’s listed at $55,000 less than we paid for it. [In Arizona] we’ll be saving on the income tax. We’ll be saving on the property tax. On average for the houses we’ve looked at out there, we’d be saving about $10,000 each year.

“Let’s be realistic about the people that are moving out. It’s because of what [politicians] are doing to all of us. It doesn’t have to do with the weather. I’ve lived here for 49 years. I know what winter is about.

“I see all these commercials. The fair tax, the fair tax. It’s not a fair tax. A fair tax is having a rate that everybody pays.

“If this progressive tax passes there is no guarantee that they’re not going to change it the following year or two years later. Because lo and behold like every other grand plan this state has seen it didn’t generate revenue like we thought it would, so we have to raise taxes on everyone.

“In 2011 they were going to hike the income tax and it was going to pay for everything and then they were going take it back. It paid for nothing. We’re in a deeper hole than we were before. For nothing. It solved absolutely nothing.

“My wife and I have been very blessed in that we’ve been able to advance in our careers. But when I started to pay more attention, I started scratching my head going ‘OK, why is [the state’s financial condition] on us?’

“I lost my job when the economy went bad [in 2008]. I went 14 months without a job. I had never been unemployed. I had essentially worked full-time hours since I was 14 years old.

“You know what we never did in those 14 months? We never missed a mortgage payment, we never missed any payments and we never took any money from anybody. Here we go with the state that can’t balance a budget, and their only answer is ‘let’s take more money from people.’

“That’s all we are, an ATM. That’s what it’s boiling down to here.

“That’s why it’s bye-bye Illinois.”

Scott Reboletti
Antioch, Illinois