One of the scariest days of the year is just around the corner and I’m not talking about All Hallows Eve when, according to Celtic tradition – which the bulk of Halloween traditions ultimately come from – people dressed up as a defense mechanism to ward off supernatural beings, or the souls of the dead, who supposedly roamed the earth during the transition from one year to the next. While unspoken, it was understood these “beings” needed to be appeased.
Sound familiar?
Read on . . .
No, it’s not Halloween that’s scary. It’s the day on which Cook County commissioners cluster to sanction the 2018 levy.
Prior to this, property owners will receive proposed property tax notices based on the preliminary levy, which presently smolders at 19.9 percent followed by the Truth-in-Taxation meeting to be held the evening of November 27th at the courthouse. The final levy will be etched in (grave) stone – as prescribed by state law – before Christmas. If past pattern is any indication, this will likely be during the commissioners’ regularly scheduled December 12 board meeting.
In character with Halloween, commissioners will once again be disguised as benevolent purveyors of public goodies with their cavernous coffers conveyed to your front door demanding monetary plunder with the all-too-familiar words “trick or treat.”
The earliest known reference to “trick or treat,” which appeared in a November 4, 1927 edition of the Blackie, Alberta, Canada Herald, depicts the fleecing this way,
“Hallowe’en provided an opportunity for real strenuous fun. The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word ‘trick or treat’ to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.”
Beginning in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church instituted its own form of “trick or treat,” introducing small round cakes called “Soul Cakes,” which were usually marked with a cross on top. It was believed that whenever a “Soul Cake” was eaten a soul was freed from purgatory.
I have a hunch we’re gonna need some of those cakes if we are to escape the paralyzing constraints of tax purgatory.
I only wish it were that simple!
“Trick or treating” is said to have slinked its way to North America in the 1920s and 1930s. I imagine during its inception, westernized Halloween adopted more of the 8th century trait of “souling.” Not only children, but adults living on a “shoestring” – especially in 1933 when the Great Depression reached its lowest point with some 15 million Americans unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks having failed – brutally understood it was about saving one’s soul.
Not everyone relishes being extorted for confections; in fact, over half of the homeowners in Britain turn off their house lights and pretend no one is at home on Halloween.
While we’re on the subject of extortion…
The Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence just released its latest report (September 2017) which captured how Minnesota’s reliance on particular revenue sources and its spending priorities compare to other states. The center publishes this annual comparison report on state and local government finance based on the most current (2015) Census Bureau data formed on public sector tax collections and spending across the country.
…and, No. Minnesota government has not gotten cheaper, let alone local county government!
Notable findings from the report
Total Minnesota state and local taxes were 13.9 percent higher than the national average based on a modified personal income basis. Minnesota’s rank increased from 9th- to 8th-highest in the nation.
Total Minnesota state and local spending per household was 5.2 percent above the national average, placing Minnesota 16th-highest in the nation.
Minnesota placed in the top 10 in spending on “safety net” programs (described by the Census as “public welfare”) – which is over twice the national average – similarly, a haunting inclusion in the county’s 2018 budget; i.e. moving “discretionary funding” into Public Health & Human Services under the guise of “safety net.”
So, when you put it all together – national, state and local – government is “goblin” up personal income at a record pace, leaving most of us with a ghost of a chance of escaping their shadowy shakedown methods.
Wouldn’t it be great, if like the British, we could just turn off our lights and pretend not to be home on the scariest day of the year?
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works.
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