May 1, 2016
Chicago Sun-Times
Progressive Illinois income tax fairer to middle class
Illinois needs a fairer income tax.
Illinois’ flat income tax - one that charges the same rate no matter how much money someone earns - hits those at the low end extra hard partly because they must spend a larger share of their income on necessities. Lower-income folks also are hit harder by a wide range of other levies, such as sales taxes, payroll taxes and property taxes. Add that all up, and the percentage of income a working-class person pays in overall taxes is much higher than the percentage paid by a wealthy person.
In contrast, a progressive income tax takes a higher percentage from people in the upper ranges of the income scale than it does from those at the bottom. That’s how the federal income tax is structured. It makes the entire tax load a little bit more equal, which should be a public policy priority in a nation moving toward ever wider income and wealth disparities.
To address the unfairness in Illinois’ tax code, state Rep. Christian Mitchell, D-Chicago, has introduced a constitutional amendment that would allow Illinois to switch to a progressive income tax. Both houses of the Legislature should give it the three-fifths backing it needs by the May 6 deadline to get the measure before voters on the Nov. 8 ballot. The proposed amendment does not need to be signed by the governor.
A progressive income tax is a basic reform that’s long overdue in Illinois. Thirty-three states have progressive income taxes, and only eight use a flat tax.
But as every day goes by, the flat taxes in those eight states grow more and more unfair.
Back when Illinois adopted an income tax in of 2.5 percent in 1969 and then decreed in the 1970 Constitution that it must always be a flat tax, the disparities in incomes among American households were not as great as they are today.
Since then, study after study has showed that the gulf between lower-income earners and those at the top is growing wider and wider. According to the Congressional Budget Office households with the top 1 percent of the nation’s wealth increased their incomes 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, while those at the bottom got just 18 percent more. It seems hardly a week goes by in which new research doesn’t come out that shows the richest are getting ever-higher incomes and piling up ever-more wealth while many average Americans struggle. It’s been a dominant theme of the 2016 presidential election.
As that gap widens, the unfairness of Illinois’ flat tax grows along with it. The bigger the disparity, the more lower-income people pay in taxes as a percentage of income than their wealthier neighbors. Moving to a progressive income tax would even things out a bit.
If Illinois does move to a progressive tax, it raises the question of what the new tax rates would be.
We’re not sure exactly where the new rates should be set, as long as they are progressive, but we agree with lawmakers who say a clearly defined structure of new rates should be clearly spelled out before voters are asked to approve the constitutional amendment authorizing a progressive income tax.
No one likes to pay taxes, but everyone should agree that taxes should be as fair as possible. A constitutional amendment would move Illinois a long way in that direction.
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May 1, 2016
The (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan
Freedom for one, mandatory minimums for too many
“Good luck to you, Scott, and Godspeed,” federal Judge Phil Gilbert said last Monday as Scott Walker walked out of the federal courthouse in Benton a free man following eighteen years in federal prison. Originally sentenced to a mandatory life sentence by Gilbert following his 1998 conviction, there had once been little hope that freedom would be an option. Former federal prosecutor turned law school professor David Zlotnick, a dedicated defense team and Judge Gilbert himself worked tirelessly to prove otherwise.
In the early ’90s, Scott Walker was a meth addict who financed that addiction by trafficking drugs. At his sentencing hearing in 1999, Judge Gilbert sentenced Walker - who had no previous felony convictions - to life in prison. At the hearing, Gilbert explained that the sentence was out of his hands, dictated by Congress and mandatory federal sentencing guidelines. “I was an emotional wreck,” Gilbert said of his feelings as he returned to his desk that day.
Letters from both Zlotnick and Gilbert were written to President Obama requesting commutation. Years of motions, petitions and legal maneuverings finally unearthed the means by which Walker was freed last week. The actions of David Zlotnick and Judge Phil Gilbert are commendable - even heroic - and resulted in the release of a single nonviolent drug offender. But these actions are not able to be mass-produced as a solution to the tens of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders still incarcerated in state and federal prisons as a result of mandatory minimum sentences.
While the final details securing Walker’s release were being worked out last month, former President Bill Clinton was campaigning for his wife, Hillary, in suburban Philadelphia, when he reversed an earlier apology for his part in overextending mandatory minimum provisions of his 1994 Crime Bill. That bill expanded upon provisions of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and has resulted in mass incarcerations. Nonviolent drug-related crime and its corresponding sentencing requirements will become an even more important issue in this year’s presidential election as soon as candidates of each party stop swiping at one another.
An unintended but fairly predictable consequence of the Crime Bill is that African-American males - a community that was overwhelmed by the crack epidemic that began in the ’80s - are incarcerated in obscene numbers for sentences that are years too long. But mandatory minimum sentencing has an effect on people of all races, albeit with a strong statistical bias in favor of whites. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reports that two-thirds of drug offenders were convicted of a crime that carried a mandatory minimum sentence. Nearly 70 percent of these are either Hispanic (38.3 percent) or African-American (31.5 percent).
In Illinois the situation is far worse. In Southern Illinois it’s worse yet. Again according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 32 percent of all 2015 offenders nationally were convicted of drug-related crimes. In Illinois that number exceeds 46 percent. In other words, those sentenced in the Southern District of Illinois are almost 50 percent more likely to have been convicted of drug offenses than the national average. And drug offenses are those that most commonly contain mandatory minimums.
The proliferation of crimes that now require a mandatory minimum sentence is astounding - and wrong. And the excessive number of years required by these “minimums” exacerbates the wrong. Not only are they wrong, however, they’re also prohibitively expensive, at both the federal and state levels.
In early March, the bipartisan Illinois State Commission on Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform proposed three bills designed to intelligently reduce the state’s prison population. SB3164 in particular deserves rapid consideration and passage.
This week’s release of Scott Walker should serve as a rallying cry for us to make candidates’ support of sentencing reform a critical issue in our decision to support them in November.
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May 2, 2016
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
Solitary must be handled carefully
Illinois Corrections Department officials are well advised to review complaints about excessive solitary confinement and institute safeguards to prevent abuses.
Testimony before an Illinois legislative committee last week raised concerns about the extent to which prison inmates are subjected to solitary confinement for rules infractions.
It’s impossible to say whether the critics or defenders of the confinement policy are correct.
But it seems obvious that such a penalty not only is harsh but can be excessively imposed and that thorough institutional oversight is required to prevent abuses.
A federal lawsuit challenging the state’s solitary confinement policy was filed last year in federal court. This year, prison inmate advocates are taking their grievances to the General Assembly in the hopes of gaining a legislative solution.
State Rep. LaShawn Ford, a Chicago Democrat, has proposed legislation that would limit solitary confinement to no more than five consecutive days or five total days during a 150-day period.
Corrections Department officials naturally object to the proposal, suggesting a measure of that nature would create severe disciplinary problems that would pose a threat to prison employees.
Holding an inmate in solitary confinement, particularly for extended periods, is a nasty business, sometimes necessary perhaps but potentially ripe for abuse. The question is, however, how much is enough.
The state devoted an entire facility - the super-maximum facility in Tamms - solely to holding its most dangerous prisoners in isolation - 23 hours a day in a single cell with one hour a day for exercise and recreation. The goal was to put the worst of the worst out of business by isolating them and limiting their contacts with fellow inmates and prison employees.
The super-maximum facility in Littleton, Colo., is a federal version of what the state had in Tamms.
Pressured by prisoner advocates, former Gov. Pat Quinn closed Tamms for humanitarian reasons, although he never publicly admitted that was his reason.
Now prisoner advocates are taking aim at solitary confinement as it is practiced throughout the rest of the state’s prison system.
Federal and state legislators are in the midst of taking a second look at incarceration policies, the concern being that they are harsh to the point of being counterproductive. The issue of solitary confinement naturally is part of that review.
It would be a mistake to lean too hard in the direction of the kind of policy Rep. Ford has proposed or in support of what some assert is an abusive status quo. But a policy that can be so easily abused must be exercised with the greatest of care that includes safeguards aimed at preventing unnecessary isolation.
Prisons are not pleasant places, largely owing to the kind of people confined there. But there’s nothing to be gained - and, indeed, something to be lost - by subjecting inmates to worse treatment than what the law, prison rules and common sense require.
If they earn their time - even extended time - in isolation, so be it. If not, holding inmates in isolation is unacceptable.
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