By Rich Eggleston

The Legislature's Joint Finance Committee voted 12-4 today to include in the state budget bill a theee-year property tax freeze with a limited allowance for growth and a new shared revenue formula that would collectively cost Alliance of Cities members $5.9 million.

The committee then approved the bill 12-4 and sent it to the Senate floor.

"We're being as decent and generous as we can," said Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin).

But Rep. Dan Schooff (D-Beloit) said if the additional money had been added to the formula and cuts distributed on a percentage basis, the cut would have been held to 6.6% for every municipality in the state.

The property tax freeze and new shared revenue plan were both adopted without ever having a public hearing from any legislative committee.

The new shared revenue formula creates a "municipal aid for basic public services" program, with higher levels of aid for below-average public safety, library and development costs, and lower levels of aid for higher-than-average public safety, library and development costs

This creates an incentive for communities that have higher than average public safety costs to cut their public safety budgets first.

The package also would allow municipalities, counties and technical colleges to unilaterally convert to the state's local government health insurance pool, without seeking union OK, except for protective employees. Some Alliance members say that provision wouldn't help them at all because their health plans are cheaper than the state plan. Others say their major payroll costs are for protective employees, so the measure provides little help.

The finance committee voted 13-3 against adding to the budget bill a plan to lift TIF limits as recommended by the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities.

"It's June 4,"  Schooff told fellow committee members. "City officials came to us in December on this issue."

News coverage on the budget package: AP's budget-at-a glance;  main budget story off the AP wire; the Wisconsin State Journal story; Capital Times story on the freeze;   Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story.

Coalition Wins 911 Compromise

The Wisconsin Alliance of Cities, the Wisconsin Chapter of the National Emergency Number (911) Association; the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association; the Wisconsin Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs Association; and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities joined together June 2 to ask the Legislature to pass a better bill to help emergency dispatchers approximate the location of people who call 911 from cellular phones.

The effort was successful: a compromise was reached that ensures better service for cellular phone users who call 911, and eases the burden on property taxpayers for improvements already made.