Only in Chicago would doing the right thing be used as a bargaining chip!
This is in today’s paper!
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/5810 ... 30.article

FYI: Maldonado is responsible for the sanctuary

PS. I’ll pay the 2% more, crack down on illegal immigrants!

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'An insult' to all Latinos?
COUNTY | Official says he was threatened on sales tax vote
September 30, 2007


BY STEVE PATTERSON Staff Reporter spatterson@suntimes.com
A Latino commissioner angrily charged Friday that Cook County Board President Todd Stroger's office and allies are threatening to crack down on illegal immigrants unless the commissioner votes for a 2 percent sales tax increase.

Commissioner Roberto Maldonado says the not-so-thinly veiled threats came to a head during a Friday breakfast meeting with Stroger chief of staff Lance Tyson.

Just three months after the County Board voted to declare the county a "sanctuary" for immigrants, Stroger ally Commissioner William Beavers is introducing a measure Tuesday to temporarily revoke that status and allow the county to study its "fiscal impact."

The bill could be swiftly acted on or sent to committee to die.

Heated exchange

Maldonado says the bill has become a bargaining chip in an effort to strong-arm him into voting for a sales tax on Monday.
He says that became clear when he and Tyson met to discuss how Maldonado might vote on hiking the sales tax by 266 percent -- from .75 percent to 2.75 percent.

Maldonado says it was then that Tyson reminded him that the county might not provide immigrants a sanctuary much longer.

"I took that as an insult to me personally and to all [Latino] people," Maldonado said. "I told them I was with them. Maybe not for a 2 percent sales tax, but I was on their side. That's how you treat people who are with you? I'm done with them."

Maldonado says their meeting ended in a heated exchange, filled with expletives, before Maldonado stormed out of the Northwest Side restaurant.

Stroger spokeswoman Ibis Antongiorgi confirmed the sides met to discuss Maldonado's vote, but was adamant that "no threat of any kind was made."

She also emphasized that Stroger was one of the original co-sponsors of the sanctuary bill.

It prohibits county employees from asking about, or county police from investigating, a person's immigration status. It also prohibits medical care from being denied to someone because of their status.

But Maldonado says it's a slap in the face that that status now might be revoked by a commissioner who has called himself Stroger's vote on the board.

Violated trust

Though Stroger has not publicly declared a position on the sales tax -- being pushed by south suburban Commissioner Joan Murphy -- Tyson has been furiously working behind the scenes for support.

And while Maldonado said he considered himself to be "with" Stroger in an effort to raise some kind of taxes to help balance the county's $3 billion budget, he now says a trust has been violated.

He says he won't back any Stroger tax plans unless Beavers withdraws his effort.

Maldonado had been considered a key vote in what is expected to be a sharply divided sales tax vote