Municipal Security Conference Nov. 12

Mayor Paul Jadin of Green Bay is hosting a one-day Municipal Security Conference Monday, November 12, in Green Bay.

The conference will be held at the  KI Convention Center,  333 Main St., Green Bay. It is still in the planning stages, but officials from all cities, villages, towns and counties  are invited. The issue of municipal security obviously affects us all, and we need to hear what other communities are doing, and what help there is from the state and federal governments. The conference will also provide a forum to share ideas with other municipal officials.

Please consider inviting your police and fire chief and other relevant personnel to attend with you.

State Budget Picture Bleak

The state budget picture is bleak, and officials are drafting contingency plans on how to cope with it, the Wisconsin State Journal reported Oct. 7.

Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, told the State Journal that the problem is so significant, cuts in school aids, county and municipal shared revenue and support for the UW System will all be on the table. For the story, look here.

At this point, that's just speculation, albeit educated speculation. On Oct. 15, the Department of Administration will release a financial report for FY2001. It will include numbers on state spending and revenues. However, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau will not release revenue projections for 2002 until January.

TIF Bill Moves

AB 510, the compromise tax increment financing legislation sponsored by Rep. Michael "Mickey" Lehman (R-Hartford), was endorsed unanimously Oct. 10  by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee. The bill, produced as a result of negotiations led by the  Wisconsin Economic Development Association, was amended (see Assembly amendment 1) to further refine the compromise. 

The compromise does not eliminate the ability of cities and villages to create so-called greenfield tax incremental districts. That allows the potential for the kind of economic development that lures new industry to a community and allows existing industries to expand.  The compromise also contains provisions that affect TIF in newly annexed territory.

Those provisions allow TIF in newly annexed areas only if:

• the city or village has an agreement (boundary or otherwise) allowing the TIF;

• the city or village waits three years before TIFing the newly annexed territory; or

• it pays the town five years worth of taxes on the property, at the assessed rate at the time of annexation.

The bill does not include ability for Florence and Menominee counties, which have no cities and villages, to create TIF districts.

1000 Friends of Wisconsin will be opposing the bill because it doesn't restrict greenfield TIF.

No Urban Subsidy for Jails
Professor Debunks Counties

There is no evidence that counties subsidize urban dwellers at the expense of their country cousins in their spending on jails, a UW economist has found.

"My focus has been, in contrast, that this double taxation is inefficient, since it rewards those who locate outside of municipalities, thereby distorting homeowner location decisions and subsidizing urban sprawl."

Counties' reaction: 'Yeah, but...'
Craig Thompson, the Wisconsin Counties Association's legislative director, responded that double-whammy foes were looking only at areas of county spending that subsidize rural homeowners, not areas that subsidize urban homeowners.

"If you look at such things as human services and county jails, you'll find that more city residents are using those services than are county residents," Thompson told the Duluth News-Tribune.

Well, McGee looked right there, using those Department of Revenue data he obtained from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.

In five of the six regression analyses he performed, he found indications that counties with proportionately higher urban populations have lower jail costs than their more rural neighbors.   But the data aren't statistically significant.

"These results strongly suggest that there is no relationship" between percentage of population that's urban and county per-capita jail spending, McGee wrote. (emphasis in original)

McGee found that counties that spend the most on a per-capita basis on their jails are either counties with very high population densities (Kenosha, Milwaukee, Rock and Walworth) or very low densites (Ashland, Forest, Rusk, Sawyer and Washburn) while the counties with the lowest spending per capita were in the middle of the pack

In his earlier study, located here, McGee similarly found no relationship between per-capita county human services spending and proportion of population that's urban.

Alliance links page debuts It's amazing how much of the business of government  is done on the Internet. The amount of information out here is prodigious, and sorting through it is a formidable challenge. There are sites on the Internet that help the Alliance staff find out what's going on, and who is saying what about whom. They're listed on the Alliance's new links page, which can be reached by clicking on the "Links" button in the left frame of this page, or by clicking here. There's even a story about a dessicated cat thrown in for your amusement.

Municipal Telecom Utilities Debated

"I feel like a Cheerios salesman at a Wheaties convention," Benforado said as he began his remarks.The task force has three or four legislators among its members, three business representatives and 17 members from the communications industry.

On Oct. 11, Ed told the Joint Committee on Information Policy, meeting on the subject of competition in the industry, that the players have changed since the Legislature deregulated the telecommunications industry in 1994, and he was pleased that local government is now at the table as lawmakers consider rewriting the deregulation law. (1993 Act 496.)

Bills to Watch

To help you keep informed, the bill number on the list below is a link to the bill history, which in turn includes a link to the text of the measure. The bill sponsor's name is an e-mail link which allows you to express your opinion or seek further information. And of course, you can ask us for information on any of these measures any tme. We'll try to keep you informed of pending action on bills and other Alliance issues in the "Upcoming Events" section at the bottom of this and future newsletters.

Bills we'll be watching -- and in many cases lobbying --  include:

SB 185,  Sen. Brian Burke (D-Milwaukee), replacing state law with union contract provisions for the discipline of police and firefighters.

SB 248, a telephone industry bill introduced Sept. 20 by Sen. Kevin Shibilski (D-Plover), a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, to rescind the rights of municipalities to create telecommunications utilities. We believe Congress pre-empted legislation of this sort in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. A federal judge in Virginia agreed last spring. For the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's story on the Wisconsin implications, look here.

AJR 10, by Rep. Mark Pettis (R-Hertel), a constitutional amendment to limit property tax increases by cities, villages, towns and counties for individual parcels of property.

AJR 50,   by Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend), a constitutional amendment to restrict the state's ability to impose regional or geographically selective taxes.

AB 35,   by Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greenfield), changing the bonding requirements for city, village and county officers.

AB 113,   by Rep. Scott Gunderson (R-Union Grove), prohibiting local residency requirements.

AB 399,   by Rep. Donald Friske (R-Merrill), would exempt cities, towns, villages and counties from paying the state gas tax. It was amended and endorsed as amended by the Assembly Transportation Committee Sept. 20. Repeal of the state gas tax for other levels of government is one of the Alliance of Cities' pro-active issues. For more, look here.

AB 490,  by Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greenfield) would phase in, over a 10-year period, the transfer to the state transportation fund of all sales tax revenue from the sale of automobiles and auto parts.

AB 494, by Rep. Scott Gunderson (R-Union Grove), prohibiting cities and villages from approving annexations of land in another county.

AB 501, this session's urban towns bill, is again sponsored by Rep. Bonnie Ladwig (R-Racine). The bill would allow towns of at least 7,500 population that meet the bill's other criteria to undertake a process to become an "urban town," thereby freezing their borders and exempting themselves from most county zoning, but not giving them TIF or extraterritorial zoning or plat review authority.

AB 510. The compromise TIF legislation produced as a result of negotiations led by the  Wisconsin Economic Development Association. It eliminates some of the damaging provisions of the legislation that came out of former Gov. Tommy Thompson's TIF working group. The compromise is sponsored by Rep. Michael "Mickey" Lehman (R-Hartford).

AB 518, introduced by Rep. Neal Kedzie (R-Elkhorn), is the companion bill to SB 248.

Upcoming Events                                             

                        Oct.     17           Leg. Cncl Cmte on Navigable Waters
                        Oct       30          Ed at Smart Growth Conference, Janesville
                        Nov.    7-9           Lake Management Conference, Madison
                        Nov.     12            Municipal Preparedness Conference, Grn Bay
                        Nov.    28-29         Alliance meeting, Sheboygan

                        2002
                         June 14-18          U.S. Conference of Mayors, Madison