Prairie State Wire

Jerry Lee Nimmons, the public service administrator of the Illinois Department of Transportation, who stands to benefit from a tax increase, supports Gov. Pritzker's progressive tax rate efforts.

Citizen vs. Machine tweeted about Nimmons' salary, "Talk about burying the lede: State employee, whose 6-figure salary and future pension stand to benefit from ANY tax hike, endorses #FairTaxNow tax hike."

Nimmons, whose salary is $104,593.52, according to The State Journal-Register's database, authored an opinion letter to The Lincoln Courier on March 31, praising Gov. J.B. Pritzker's tax hike.

He wrote that he did not understand how President Donald Trump's approval rating isn't near zero and suggested the nation continues to celebrate the president's "ignorance and incompetence."

Nimmons then switched gears and applauded Pritzker's efforts to combat coronavirus, along with his efforts to establish the progressive tax rate to help Illinois taxpayers, saying it will go far in helping rebuild the economy after the pandemic.

Nimmons says people are using the old argument against the federal income tax to oppose the graduated income tax—that job creators will leave and jobs will be lost if it is enacted. He says if that were true, the standard of living would have declined in the last century since the federal income tax was established, whereas it has increased.

"It’s tragic that our educational system has been so bad for so long that a number of folks are still supporting a position that has had no objective basis in fact for such a long time," Nimmons said.

Illinois Policy Institute believes the progressive income tax will cause residents to leave the state, as Illinois has already lost multitudes of residents over the last decade. While the bill was signed into law by Pritzker in 2019, it must be voted on by citizens in November.