* Back in May, Rich wrote that ‘unexpectedly’ Pritzker wouldn’t rule out a service tax for mass transit revenue. An excerpt…

Gov. JB Pritzker unexpectedly moved away last week from his longstanding opposition to taxing services, saying he didn’t want to start taking ideas off the table as lawmakers search for ways to fund and reform the Chicago region’s mass transit system. […]

So, my associate Isabel Miller (who contributed to this column) asked Pritzker during an unrelated media event if he wanted to take any state taxes off the table before the talks heat up, including the service tax.

“I have never been in favor of that before,” Pritzker said of the service tax. He has indeed opposed the tax all the way back to his first 2018 gubernatorial campaign, often calling it regressive.

“There may need to be a source of revenue here,” Pritzker said, “but that’s not something that I have favored in the past.”

As far as specifically ruling out a service tax, however, the governor said: “I really don’t want to start saying, ‘We’re not going to do this, we’re not going to do that.’ At this point, there are just so many pieces of this that we have to look at before we’re going to pay for what’s necessary here as we come off of support from the federal government and making sure we’re restoring transit services.”

* Today, the governor completely shut down an expansion of the sales tax to services during a press gaggle…

Reporter: Last week, House Democrats were presented a menu of options in caucus on revenue since they weren’t so hot in some of your ideas in your introduced budget. One of them was a broadening the sales tax to cover services. Would you support that idea? And if not, what revenue options are you considering to balance the budget?

Pritzker: No, I’ve been opposed to any taxes that are broad based or that would affect working families in this budget.

Reporter: What would you do about a budget that had stuff like that in it?

Pritzker: I’m telling you, anything that’s broad based and that would have a negative impact on working families. I would veto a budget like that. […]

Reporter: Governor you said you would veto a budget that had a broad tax increase. Do the legislative leaders share that sentiment? Have you had conversations with Welch and Harmon about that?

Pritzker: I’ve been pretty clear with everybody that you know, individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, sales taxes. We are not about raising those taxes at all. I would veto a bill that does that.