The Need To Secede

By vouchey in News on Jun 25, 2004 12:33PM

Unlike those cheese-eating surrender monkeys, the French, Americans are rugged individualists. We like to do things on our own. And so in the Great American Spirit of rugged individualism, some folks in southern Cook County are trying to break off and form their own county, Lincoln County.

The area of about 900,000 people would include the entire south Cook County suburbs south of I-55 and includes some of the state's poorest areas. It's mainly a tax dodge, says organizer Donald Peloquin. The new county would lower taxes to attract investment and new industry, which has generally fled the area since the early 1980's.

But don't get too excited about a new county, folks have tried to seceed from Cook County in 1970, 1977, 1985 and 1995. And because it requires an OK from the state legislature -- which is dominated by representatives from Chicago -- the measures never pass.