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.

"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 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:

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

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 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.

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))

Not surprisingly, one of the issues that came up at the "Is Wisconsin's Constitution Obsolete?" conference was annexation and consolidation. And participants found a bit of obsolescence, either planned or unplanned.

"There's nothing in the constitution that says we have to have 1,800 units of government," former Gov. Tony Earl said. "Clearly it's inefficient, but it's very difficult to change the status quo."

Former Gov. Patrick J. Lucey said he once got a federal grant to study the consolidation of Neenah and Menasha. The grant money was spent, the issue was studied, and there's still a Neenah and a Menasha, he said.

"There are some obstacles in the present constitution to merging communities," said former Lt. Gov. Margaret Farrow. She specifically mentioned that the uniformity clause is a stumbling block for communities that want to combine, because the pre-merger community with lower debt would be taking on some of the oblications of its neighbor with greater indebtedness.

A proposed constitutional amendment originally drafted by former Rep. Dan Vrakas and sponsored in the past session by Rep. Scott Newcomer, would remedy that. It's likely to come up again.

Farrow also said Waukesha County has 37 municipalities and 115 fire trucks, which she suggested was an indication of a certain redundancy.

"Communities have to pull their citizens along to consolidate and merge," she added. "You can do that by statute, not be changing the constitution."

Earl said 66 of Wisconsin's counties are experiencing declining enrollments in their school systems, yet merging school districts meets with "stubborn resistance" to the demographic trend.

Hundreds of thousands of voters told the Wisconsin Legislature to do something about health-care costs in referenda around the state Tuesday. The results, according to Wisconsin Citizen Action:

County/Municipality	YES	NO	% YES
Dane County	171,396	34,159	83%
Eau Claire County	30,152	6,230	83%
La Crosse County	33,315	6,350	84%
Wood County	24,022	3,894	86%
Dunn County	11,863	2,289	88%
Jackson County	5,923	845	88%
City of Racine	17,864	3,598	83%
City of Manitowoc	9,634	1917	83%
City of DePere	6,735	1,936	78%
City of Lodi	974	151	87%
City of Green Lake	396	65	86%
TOTAL	288,276	61,434	82%

Foes marched against Madison's smoking ban — but didn't bring it back for a vote

"APPLETON - A coalition of bar owners is conceding defeat in its second attempt to overturn the smoking ban that went into effect in July 2005.

"Robert Meyer, owner of Volume 1 and president of the Appleton Coalition for Business Owners Rights, said bar owners will try to persuade the city council to exempt some bars from the ban. If that attempt fails, they plan to launch another referendum campaign next year.

"The council, under the state’s direct legislation law, has the right to change or eliminate the smoking ban two years after it was enacted.

"Voters now have supported the ban three times - enacting it the first time through a referendum, then rejecting two more referendums to overturn all or part of it."

State		Vote	Margin

Maine	No	259,967	54%
	Yes	220,721	46%
Nebraska	No	401,860	70%
	Yes	169,743	30%
Oregon*	No	451,002	71%
	Yes	185,477	29%
*incomplete returns