NOVEMBER 9, 2006 E-NEWSLETTER

Election Results: Meaning for Cities?

Top Alliance Issues: Local Control, Local Control and Local Control

Appleton Voters Endorse Smoking Ban... Again

Upcoming events

In what outgoing Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz called a Democratic tsunami, Republicans turned over control of the Wisconsin Senate Nov. 7 to Democrats, who will hold an 18-15 margin in the smaller house.  With one race still in doubt, Republicans reduced their margin in the Assembly to 52 or 53 votes.

In the Senate, Wauwatosa Ald. Jim Sullivan bested Sen. Tom Reynolds (R-West Allis) and Kethleen Vinehout beat Sen. Ron Brown (R-Eau Claire). In the seat held by Sen. Dave Zien (R-Eau Claire), Democrat Pat Krielow took 51 percent of the vote, defeating the long-time senator 31,564 to 30,468. State Rep. John Lehman (D-Racine) defeated his Republican opponent, Racine County Executive Bill McReynolds, for an open Senate seat.

In the Assembly, four incumbent Republicans were ousted: Reps. Rob Kreibich of Eau Claire, Gabe Loeffelholz of Platteville,  Steve Freese of Dodgeville, Judy Krawczyk of Green Bay and Mark Pettis of Hertel. In addition, Democrat Gordon Hintz of Oshkosh won the open seat left by the retirement of Rep. Gregg Underheim (R-Oshkosh.)

Republicans had hoped that anti-GOP feelings nationally would not extend to the statehouse, but they were wrong.

What does it mean for cities?

"It means no TABOR," said Edward J. Huck, executive director of the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities. "I'm not sure if TABOR will even come up in the Assembly. "I think TABOR is on life support in Wisconsin."

"A split legislature is good for local governments," said Curt Witynski, assistant director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities.

But it's a little early to play "Happy Days are Here Again" for callers who are put on hold at City Hall. We have no reason to expect the repeal of levy limits. Also, the economy is sluggish and the four major state agencies that, along with the shared revenue program, rely most on general purpose revenue (GPR) have already requested $1.4 billion in additional GPR over the next two years. Those dark clouds could easily rain on local governments' picnic.

City Leaders to help Alliance set 2007-2008 agenda

City leaders and finance directors of the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities gather in Marshfield Nov. 16-17 to set the organization's proactive agenda for the coming legislative session. Recognizing that much of the work the Alliance does in any legislative session is reactive, city leaders for a number of years have charted a preemptive agenda for the organization as well. Agendas are being emailed today.   For other details of the meeting, go here.

This year we set out across the state for a series of regional meetings and put together a list of 38 ideas that came up. We held regional meetings in Franklin, Manitowoc, Superior, Beloit, Eau Claire, Racine, Wisconsin Rapids and Oshkosh.

The concerns expressed to us fit nicely into a slightly retooled version of our 4 Rs:

• reduce property taxes;
• reform government;
• revitalize our economy; and
• restore local control.

The top issues on the minds of city leaders across the state were responses to assaults on local control:

• exempting costs out of a city's control from state-imposed levy limits;
• exempting excessive arbitration awards from levy limits; and
• making contracting out city services permissive subjects of bargaining if the savings are demonstrable.

We'll be recommending that those issues be consolidated into a single "return reason to levy limits" issue, along with including growth in tax exempt property values as an exclusion from levy limits.

The Wisconsin Constitution Courts, Legislature abuse state authority, experts agree By Rich Eggleston The home rule provision of Wisconsin's constitution has been interpreted to give local governments in Wisconsin very little rule at home, an expert in constitutional law told the conference at Marquette University, "Is Wisconsin's Constitution Obsolete?" In a paper presented to the conference, Michael E. Libonati of Temple University, said court rulings on preemption of municipal home rule authority "effectively deprive home rule units of whatever shield against legislative interference the 1924 (home rule) amendment seemed to promise." As it is, courts have uniformly denied local governments any taxing authority beyond what the Legislature confers on them, and home rule authority has been interpreted as "limiting rather than granting powers" to local governments, Libonati said. As long ago as 1912, State Supreme Court Justice William H. Timlin noted that home rule authority is worth nothing without "the power of taxation on the part of the city for city purposes," he wrote. The current constitution’s provision on state-local relations, Libonati concluded, "lacks focus, invites disjointed interpretation by the Legislature and courts by using enigmatic phrases, and embraces the plural values of uniformity and diversity without providing a standard by which to measure the tradeoffs between these competing values." Wisconsin local governments could gain more real home-rule power, he added, by adopting models that have worked in Pennsylvania and Illinois. Uniformity Clause problems seen too Libonati also recommended that we rethink the entrenched uniformity principles that have evolved in the constitution. "Local government is about diversity and experimentation," he wrote. "Constitutional constraints that invalidate local option legislation merit skepticism." Myron Orfield, the former legislator and a professor of law at the University of Minnesota who drafted that state's tax-base sharing system for the Twin Cities metropolitan area, suggested it was judicial interpretation of Wisconsin's uniformity clause, not the clause itself, that has tied the hands of the Legislature if such a device were under discussion here. Minnesota has as rigid a uniformity clause as Wisconsin, but tax-base sharing was upheld there, he said. (Burnsville v Onischuk, 301 Minn. 137, 22 N.W.2d 523 cert. denied 420 U.S. 916 (1974))