By a more than 2-1 margin Nov. 5, voters in the Brown County town of Bellevue approved becoming a village. Voter turnout in the town of more than12,000 people was less than 45%. For the Green Bay Press Gazette story, look here.

An intergovernmental agreement between Fitchburg, the city of Madison and the town of Madison that provides for the eventual assimilation of the town into the two cities was approved by Madison's city council Nov. 5. The vote was 16-4. The three municipalities now must draft a cooperative plan and win state Dept. of Administration approval.

Central Wisconsin  municipalities continue to look for ways to share services, despite assurances they will receive state shared revenue in 2003, the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune reported Oct. 27. In Wisconsin Rapids, city officials are studying projects including shared emergency dispatch services and an emergency water connection with the village of Port Edwards, said Mayor Jerry Bach. See the story here.

The state Dept. of Revenue Nov. 4 issued mandate waiver criteria. John W. Rader, administrator of DOR's division of state and local finance, said in a letter to local officials that the program recognizes the need to adapt the broad policy objectives of the law to changing and potentially unique local circumstances. While DOR will serve as a clearinghouse for waiver requests, individual agencies will generally act on them, he said. To see the criteria, click here. To contact Rader with questions, email him at jrader@dor.state.wi.us.

A pension bill that the Legislature passed in 1999 will cost state and local government a minimum of $5.7 billion in additional retirement contributions over the next 12 years, the Milwaukee Business Journal reported. Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, then a Republican lawmaker from Wauwatosa,  was one of 20 representatives who voted against the pension enhancement bill. He told the Business Journal that there were "red flags" aplenty, but the Legislature still passed the bill. See the story here.

Racine Area Manufacturers & Commerce and the Racine Taxpayers Association support a countywide dispatch center and have been lobbying against having two multimillion-dollar law enforcement projects only 10 miles apart, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Nov. 5. See the story here.

Gov. Scott McCallum "sealed his doom in January with his high-profile, ill-fated budget proposal to kill state revenue sharing,  veteran political analyst Ken Lamke wrote in the Nov. 8 edition of the Madison weekly Isthmus. "It was, substantively and politically, probably the worst single major policy proposal by a Wisconsin governor in at least 40 years," added Lamke, who covered politics for two decades for the old Milwaukee Sentinel before joining the merged Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Neither the current shape nor quality of metropolitan growth in America is sustainable, but the philosophy of "smart growth" can make metropolitan solutions work, says a study by the London School of Economics. The study says our metropolitan areas could grow in radically different ways if major governmental policies on land use, infrastructure and taxation were overhauled. See the 32-page study here.