March 5, 2002 e-newsletter

In this issue:

Rally for Shared Revenue Investment
Scheduled for March 12

By Curt Witynski
Assistant Director
League of Wisconsin Municipalities

Local officials are encouraged to participate in a rally to preserve the state's shared revenue program from the Governor's proposed  cuts, scheduled for March 12. The rally, to be held in Madison, is being organized by the League on behalf of Partners for Strong Communities, a coalition of public employee unions and municipal associations.

The particulars:

Date: March 12th
Time: 11:30-1:00
Location:  Monona Terrace, 1 John Nolen Dr., Madison (For a map, click here.)
Schedule: At 11:30 we will gather and listen to speakers.  Around 12:00 noon we will walk up Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. to the Capitol grounds and walk around the Capitol to the State Street side and hear more speakers.
We will disperse at 1 p.m. for meetings with legislators in the Capitol. Please make appointments with your legislators.
Participants: The following groups make up Partners for Strong Communities and will be participating in the rally: AFSCME Council 40, AFL-CIO; Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin; AFSCME Council 48, AFL-CIO; League of Wisconsin Municipalities Insurance Trust; and the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities.
Parking: Monona Terrace has 600 parking spaces in a public ramp.

Alliance, Counties Offer Alternatives

Alliance members, meeting Feb. 21 in Madison, adopted their own deficit reduction plan, proposed a reform of state and local governments  and called for a constitutional convention to reduce the number of local governments in Wisconsin.

Alliance members:

• demanded cuts of state agency spending to yield $550 million in budget reductions.
• called for the elimination of special-interest property tax exemptions. (General purpose revenue savings: $80 million.)
• proposed eliminating the school levy tax credit in 2004. Tobacco settlement money would be used to fund $380 million of the school levy credit in 2002, with the same revenue source used to replace the school levy credit in 2003, actions which guarantee no increase in property taxes. The levy credit will be part of school funding reform. (Annual GPR savings: $469 million.)
• called for meetings with legislative leadership to determine local government’s fair and equitable role in resolving the state’s fiscal crisis.
• reaffirmed local government’s support for expenditure restraint, and expansion of spending controls to include state government.
• called on the state to develop mechanisms for regionalizing services and tax-base sharing.

See the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on our plan here.

Counties Propose Reducing Sales Tax Rate

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Counties Association proposed freezing most state spending, repealing many sales tax exemptions and lowering the sales tax from 5% to 3.5%. See the counties' press release on the plan here.

See the Journal Sentinel story on that plan here.

Talking Points
Local Gov'ts. Gain Support

Local government has been gaining tremendous support in its fight against the idea of eliminating  no-strings-attached state revenue sharing. Just look at the news stories, editorials and the letters to the editor of your local newspaper.

Among our strongest arguments:

• Shared revenue is the "great equalizer" that prevents taxes from rising out of sight in property-poor communities. It's part of the tradition that Fighting Bob La Follette bestowed on us. It's one of the best state revenue sharing systems in the country, said Myron Orfield, author of Wisconsin Metropatterns, in a story here. And only someone who is focused exclusively on short-term goals trather than long-term strategies for improving Wisconsin would want to dismantle that tradition. See this Journal Sentinel story.
• It's the state's spending binge, not local governments' excesses, that produced the state budget deficit. The Journal Sentinel's Steve Walters told that story dispassionately but eloquently, here.
• In many communities, there is nowhere to cut except for basic services. These problems aren't confined just to cities. For example, the Racine County town of Caledonia would have to abolish its parks, health and engineering departments and eliminate bus service and it still couldn't make up for the proposed cuts. For a Racine Journal Times story on the effects of the cuts in Racine and Kenosha counties, look here. 
• The state is misrepresenting the effect of its cuts. "What do Enron and Gov. Scott McCallum have in common?" the Wisconsin State Journal asked in an editorial Feb. 25. "They both cooked the books."

The governor says his plan enjoys widespread support. If you beg to differ, please drop him a note by clicking on the button below. Thanks.

Now we suspect...

Wausau Mayor Linda Lawrence and Libertarian Candidate Ed Thompson at meeting in Marshfield

...why Gov. McCallum was a no-show at  Marshfield meeting MARSHFIELD —  When city and village leaders from central Wisconsin met with candidates for governor Jan. 11, Gov. Scott McCallum was a no-show, pleading a scheduling conflict. Eleven days later, McCallum announced his plan to end revenue sharing with local governments as a device to balance the state budget. The candidates who did attend the Jan. 11 meeting —  Rep. Tom Barrett (D-Wis.); Attorney General Jim Doyle; State Sen. Gary George (D-Milwaukee); Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk; and Libertarian Ed Thompson, the mayor of Tomah —  all expressed strong support for the shared revenue program.

Mayors Wax Rhapsodic (kind of) on McCallum Plan

There was a poetry contest on WAPL Radio in Appleton on March 4, and a number of Alliance city leaders submitted entries.

One of Neenah Mayor Ken Harwood's offerings, to the tune of the Beatles' Yesterday:

Yesterday, the State's budget seemed so far away Now we know the billion’s gone away Oh, I believe in yesterday Suddenly, we're not half the City that we used to be There's a governor hanging over me oh, yesterday came suddenly Why Tommy had to go I don't know, he wouldn't say We said something wrong, now we long for yesterday Yesterday, politics was such an easy game to play Now we need to pay and pay and pay oh, I believe in yesterday Suddenly, the State wants more and more and more from me There's a governor hanging over me oh, yesterday came suddenly Why Tommy had to go I don't know, he wouldn't say We said something wrong, now we long for yesterday

Revenue Sharing Takes Off in Racine

As the state debates dumping revenue sharing, communities in Racine County are embracing the concept.  It's part of an agreement to add capacity to the city's wastewater treatment plant to serve suburban growth. For a summary of the agreement printed by the Racine Journal Times, look here.

For details of the revenue-sharing plan, look here.

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McCallum Air Fleet Faces Trim

Gov. Scott McCallum has accepted recommendations to trim the state's airplane fleet more than McCallum belatedly proposed in the wake of criticism from Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist..

Gov. McCallum ordered that half of the state's air fleet be sold after Mayor Norquist asserted that the planes are little more than a high-cost taxi service for McCallum and other state officials. Mayor Norquist and other city leaders cited exemples of wasteful uses of the airplane fleet during the Alliance's Feb. 21 meeting in Madison. For more on developments regarding the plane fleet, look here.

The state just bought three Swiss turboprop airplanes like this one

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