| Partners for Strong Communities, the local
government / public employee coalition formed last year to preserve state shared revenues
held a lobbying event April 25th. This year's message was not only "No more cuts in
Shared Revenue," but "Don't tie the hands of local government in delivering
services to our citizens." The latter message,
of course, was in response to a proposal by four Republican legislators to freeze local
property taxes by fiat. The implications of doing that were not lost on the crowd that
gathered at the Monona Terrace Convention Center before heading to the Capitol.
"How are you going to freeze the number of fire calls
or police calls?" asked Senate Minority Leader Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton). "We
are not elected to run cities and counties. That's not my job."
Trek to the Capitol
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About 400 union members, fire fighters and
elected officials streamed from Monona Terrace to the Capitol. They included Keith Pirlot, a 25-year member of the National Guard
and a member of Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, featured in an ad that ran
statewide urging citizens to support shared revenue. |
Participants urged legislators and their staffs to:
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Oppose further cuts in shared revenue. |
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Support all transfers to the general
fund needed to preserve shared revenue. |
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Support the per-capita formula for
accomplishing the cuts. |
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Oppose the property tax freeze proposed by
four legislators. |
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Maintain current law on county income
maintenance administration; and |
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Remove the $37 million cap on what county
nursing homes can receive through intergovernmental transfers. (IGT) |
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UW Professor Andy Reschovsky's guest column from the Wisconsin
State Journal was printed on the back of the handout that participants distributed.
See the guest column here.
| TV ads called "a charade" In an e-mail to fellow members of the Legislature, Rep. Phil
Montgomery (R-Green Bay) was more concerned about who paid for the Partners for Strong
Communities' message than with the content of the message.
He called the Partners' TV ads a "charade," and
called last year's campaign to protect shared revenues from former Gov. Scott McCallum's
plan to eliminate them "a partisan advertising campaign."
Partners for Strong Communities isn't the only group that ran TV ads on budget
issues. So did AARP. See the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on the two ad campaigns here.
In a press release, Montgomery asserted of the Partners
ads that "no matter how you spin it, taxpayer dollars are being used to fund
politically slanted issue ads."
In his e-mail he asked lawmakers to find out where the
money to air the ads came from, and the crowd at Monona Terrace was told how to respond.
"The money that we contributed came from dollars
other than association dues," said Mark O'Connell, executive director of the
Wisconsin Counties Association. |
Keith Pirlot
"...some state legislators
are considering crippling cuts in shared revenue, which funds local services and first
responders like the local heroes who safeguard our homes and families, protect us in times
of emergency and keep our communities healthy and strong." |
| Ed Huck, executive
director of the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities, said his group's share came from interest
earnings on its rainy day fund, a device he pointed out the Legislature has never
significantly funded. Curt Witynski, of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, said his
organization's share came from its insurance trust. Bob
Lyons, former executive director of AFSCME Council 40, said AFSCME members approved a $1 a
month dues increase last year to finance public education efforts like the Partners ads.
Rick Gale, president of Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, said his group's
contribution also came from dues.
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz used lobby day to make his
first official visit to the Capitol as mayor. See the Wisconsin State Journal
story here. See
Amy Rinard's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel column on the lobby day and the property
tax freeze proposal (see next story) here. |
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'Big Spenders' Revisited
Local Officials Plotting 'Massive Tax Increases'?
By Rich Eggleston
| Some folks were upset by comments that State
Sen. Dave Zien (R-Eau Claire) made on the Wisconsin Public Television Program Here and
Now. Zien is a co-sponsor of a legislative plan
to freeze property taxes in the state for two years to prevent local governments from
passing on a penny of proposed aid cuts to property taxpayers. Sen. Bob Welch
(R-Redgranite) told the Legislative Fiscal Bureau to make the dubious assumption that
local governments and schools would pass on 100% of shared revenue reductions and a
shortfall in school funding.
"Don't you trust the locals to hold the line?"
program host Frederica Freiberg asked Zien. |
Frederica
Freiberg
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| "No," Zien replied. "...We
think we're gonna see massive tax increases — massive property tax increases
across the state" without the legislation. Does
this sound anything like former Gov. Scott McCallum's claim that local governments are
"big spenders?"
The reaction from Democrats was swift.
| "Sen. Zien's claim that local officials
can't be trusted to hold the line on taxes and spending is both incorrect and
insulting," said Senate Minority Leader Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton). "...It is
the local governments that have held their spending at reasonable levels, while state
government has gone on a spending binge." Zien
also claimed a levy freeze would help Wisconsin's economy. Andrew Reschovsky, a professor
of applied economics at UW-Madison, said in a guest column in the Wisconsin State
Journal that a property tax freeze could do just the opposite, because business
leaders who make location decisions want quality schools and quality public services just
as much as they want low taxes. See the column here. |
Sen. Erpenbach
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(Headline in West Bend Daily News, 4/19/03)
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The proposed property tax freeze could have a
more direct effect on economic development in the state's communities by discouraging new
development, local leaders say. In West Bend, Mayor
Mike Miller told his Common Council that the proposed levy freeze could force the
city to postpone approval of two subdivisions totaling 196 acres and more than 450 homes. |
| "We would not have any
money to plow streets, to pick up garbage (or) to provide fire or police protection"
to new development, Mayor Miller told the West Bend Daily News. The proposal especially hurts growing cities, Mayor Miller said.
Developers across the state fumed at the plan, The Daily Reporter, a construction
industry newspaper, said. See its editorial here.
Municipal bond experts tell us that a freeze could also
hurt local governments' mostly excellent bond ratings. Mayor Miller explained why in a
letter to Sen. Bob Welch (R-Redgranite). See the letter here. |
Ed Huck
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On one of the last Tom Clark
programs on Wisconsin Public Radio, Alliance Executive Director Ed Huck told listeners
that lawmakers want to be able to blame Gov. Jim Doyle for any property tax increases that
occur in the wake of shared revenue cuts and smaller than expected school aid increases.
"It's an overreaction. It's a
misstatement of what local government officials have been saying. It is contrived and it
is dangerous," Huck said of a levy freeze. "The unintended consequences are just
too high." |
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Budget Crunch Symposium
How to Manage Cuts?
"THE BUDGET CRUNCH: Successful Management in New Financial Times" is the
subject of a Springsted mini-symposium May 22 at the Concourse Hotel, 1 W. Dayton St.,
Madison. The meeting was scheduled around the Alliance of Cities' May 22-23 meetings and
the League/Alliance legislative luncheon in Madison.
The symposium is open to everyone. The registration fee is $25. Pay Springsted, not the
Alliance.
For the agenda and a link to Springsted, look here. For more on the Alliance meetings
(agendas will be sent to members soon) and the Alliance/League legislative luncheon, and
to RSVP, click here.
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| News Briefs In Eau Claire, City Manager Don Norrell
expects a $2.8 million projected budget shortfall for 2004 to grow because of
higher-than-expected health insurance costs, the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram
reports. The $2.8 million figure assumes the city doesn’t raise its property tax
rate, loses $1.1 million in state aid and funds increases in debt service and employee
wages and benefits. See the newspaper's story here.
The burden of transportation finance is
gradually being shifted to local governments, says the Brookings Institution's Center on
Urban and Metropolitan Policy, in the latest paper in its transportation reform series.
"Without any deliberate or conscious change in policy, transportation finance is
gradually devolving to local governments and lessening its reliance on user fees,"
Brookings said.
The trend, which we haven't seen in Wisconsin, seems to be for increased local or regional
sales taxes earmarked for transportation. See the Brookings study here.
A proposed water deal between Green Bay and nine
suburbs is imperiled as a result of new federal radium guidelines, a looming
water shortage in the city itself, lack of time to build a new pipeline to Lake Michigan
and Department of Natural Resources foot-dragging on aquifer storage and recovery plans,
the Green Bay Press Gazette reports. See that story here.
The gun lobby is planning another drive-by shooting
of citizens and local governments, the vehicle this time being AB 96, a bill making it
impossible for Wisconsin citizens or communities to sue gun
manufacturers over shooting deaths or injuries. Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist
told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his city considered suing gun
manufacturers, but "we didn't think we'd win." See the story here.
New York City's smoking ban on bars and
restaurants takes effect in July, and it may be encouraging other cities and states around
the country to get tougher on second-hand smoke, the Christian Science Monitor
editorialized. "Some 1,600 municipalities around the nation have clean-indoor-air
ordinances," the newspaper said. "Unfortunately, 18 states have 'preemption'
laws forbidding local officials from passing smoking bans." See the Monitor
editorial here. |
