Emanuel Wants New Tobacco Taxes - to Pay for CPS Student Program

Source from:  Chicago Tribune 01/12/2016

Months after pushing through a city budget with a record $755 million in new taxes and fees, Mayor Rahm Emanuel now wants to hike the taxes on cigars, smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own cigarettes to pay for expanding orientation programs for Chicago Public Schools students.

The $6 million Emanuel wants to collect each year through the new taxes would fund a one-week summer transition program for all incoming CPS high school freshmen and a summer remediation program for at-risk eighth-graders. This would happen at a time the school district is trying to avoid deep looming cuts after passing a 2016 budget that relied on significant financial help from state lawmakers that has yet to materialize.

And it comes as the mayor seeks to repair his fractured relationship with Chicago minorities and change the public conversation amid ongoing national scrutiny of his administration after releasing video of Laquan McDonald being shot by police.

Emanuel's new tobacco tax package will be introduced to the City Council this week. It calls for a 15-cent tax per "little cigar," which would raise the cost of a 20-pack of the cigars, like some varieties of Swisher Sweets, from $5.79 to $8.79, according to the Emanuel administration. It would impose a 90-cent tax on larger cigars.

The mayor wants a tax of $1.80 per ounce on smokeless tobacco, to bump the price of a 1.2-ounce can from $4.19 to $6.35; and a $6.60-per-ounce tax on roll-your-own tobacco, to raise the average price of a "small pouch" from $7.25 to $11.54.

Emanuel has frequently targeted tobacco when he wants to raise revenue, trying in the process to position himself as a crusader against youth smoking and the evils of Big Tobacco. The 2016 budget includes taxes on electronic cigarettes set to bring in just $1 million.

He included a 50-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes in his 2014 budget, which brought Chicago's combined federal, state and local per-pack tax to $7.17 - the highest in the nation.

While Emanuel often discusses these moves in terms of health benefits rather than revenue, with the myriad hikes he risks adding to his reputation as a mayor who nickels and dimes constituents. Enditem