Claiming that Cook County government has abused its power and risks bringing the state down along with the county, a few state senators have announced a proposal to fight the county’s recent 1 percent sales tax hike.

New legislation would allow the Illinois General Assembly to reduce the Cook County sales tax rate from 1.75 to 0.75 percent and require that any future tax increase be put forth to voters in a referendum.

Sen. Matt Murphy, R-27th District, of Palatine, and Sen. Christine Radogno, R-41st District, of Lemont, along with Sen. Frank Watson, leader of the Senate Republican Caucus, announced the proposal at a press conference Friday afternoon at the Thompson Center in Chicago.

Murphy sponsored the legislation, Senate Bill 3056, and introduced it Tuesday8 and it was sent to the Rules Committee. He called the step to roll back taxes from the state level “unusual and unprecedented.”

“They’ve abused their power, and when you abuse your power, you get it taken away. They’re driving Cook County’s economy into the ditch, and they’re going to affect people in the state,” he said, and added that the Stroger administration is making Cook County “commercially uncompetitive.”

Murphy pointed to a provision in the state constitution that would allow the General Assembly to infringe on home-rule powers through a 60 percent vote, a supermajority.

Radogno said the bill sends a message to home-rule entities that the state Legislature is going to keep an eye on them and try to keep them in check.

“When a unit of government has overstepped its bounds, like the way Cook County has, people take notice (of differences in sales taxes),” she said.

She added that, in choosing where to shop, she’d obviously choose a store in a Will County municipality, where the sales tax is 7 percent, over a store in a neighboring Cook County community with a 10.25 percent sales tax.

“That’s not a difficult choice for me, particularly with people being so mobile,” she said. “There does come a tipping point ... where people say, ‘Wait a minute, I really am going to pay attention to this and make decisions based on this tax,’ and I think we’ve reached that tipping point in Cook County and that’s why this legislation makes sense.”

James Ramos, spokesman for Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, has said the county is, in part, making up for cuts in state funding, and it’s not likely the tax increase will be reversed.

“It’s not going to change with this board — not at this point with this administration, with the picture of the economy and the picture of the county,” Ramos said. “President Stroger said it was a difficult decision but critical at this time so that health and safety services remain intact. While the economy is pretty bad, county services are being used more than ever before.”