| Alliance sets Next Session's Agenda
| City Leaders have identified more than five
dozen issues that are candidates for the organization's 2005-2006 proactive agenda. The
potential issues will be narrowed by mail ballot, and the finalists will be discussed,
then voted on, at our July 29-30 meeting in Marinette. This year we asked members to
identify both big issues and small ones. Executive
director Ed Huck will also present a plan for a new shared revenue formula on Friday, July
30.
The issues fall into several broad categories, which
include solving problems regionally, embracing fair taxation, pushing governmental reform,
reforming health-care, municipal labor relations and shared revenue, winning mandate
relief and fighting sprawl. City leaders: please R.S.V.P. to the Marinette
meetings today. For particulars of the meetings and an R.S.V.P. form, click
here. |
Alliance Moves Office
The Alliance of Cities is moving
temporarily to 16 N. Carroll Street, Suite 305, while our office at 14 W. Mifflin Street
is being remodeled.
Our phone number and mailing address
will remain unchanged, and Internet access should not be affected. |
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Chronic Wasting Disease of Government
Republican Legislators Scuttle TABOR
By Rich
Eggleston
Leaders of the Wisconsin Legislature, who
came nowhere near winning the support for a "Taxpayers Bill of Rights" in even
one house, have abandoned efforts to get their shadowy proposal on the state's November,
2006 election ballot. Although one version of TABOR, Rep. Frank Lasee's AJR 55, was
actually introduced in the Legislature, subsequent attempts to rewrite the proposal were
mostly cloaked in secrecy.
AJR 55 was closely patterned after a
constitutional amendment that had disastrous effects in Colorado, and which that state's
policymakers have been unable to temper. The last nail in TABOR's coffin here was the
appearance of Colorado's Rep. Brad Young (R-Lamar) at a statewide forum sponsored by the
Wisconsin Counties Association.
"He told them that under TABOR, basic
state services - even at their most bare-bones - are 'unsustainable' and that
representative democracy inevitably will devolve into direct democracy," Diane Carman
wrote in the Denver Post. "'Human nature being what it is,' blinded by
self-interest and hobbled by a shallow understanding of state problems, he said, TABOR is
recipe for chaos."
"For Republicans eyeing the
governor's mansion in Wisconsin and figuring that the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights just might
be their ticket there, it must have been exasperating," Carman wrote. For her full
June 13 column, look here.
Carman said Wisconsin is one of the states
on the hit-list of Dick Armey's Citizens for a Sane Economy, ("We call it Citizens
for an Insane Economy," says Ed Muir of the American Federation of Teachers.) which
is trying to spread TABOR across the country, kind of like chronic wasting disease.While
responsible legislators chose to look before they leap this time around, TABOR will be
back, Amy Rinard wrote in her June 26 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel column, here.
| TABOR advocates: embracing 'pigotry'? There's an
easy to spot line that separates discussion of public issues on the merits of those issues
and discussion of public issues that devolves into name-calling and slurs. Rep. Frank
Lasee (R-Bellevue), the sponsor of AJR 55, has always taken the high road in discussion of
the issues surrounding TABOR, and we hope we have too.
Some of Lasee's lieutenants, however, have clearly strayed
across the line into the kind of discourse that, if it were directed at a racial or ethnic
minority would justly be labeled bigotry. JJ Blonien, who heads a mysterious group called
"Wisconsin United," has created the mascot at right for the state's pro-TABOR
movement, which appears on the Internet under the banner, "Don't Let Government Tax
Increases Eat You Out of House and Home." |
JJ Blonien's view of government
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While this is very cute, it's a slur on the hard-working
men and women in government who do their darndest to give the taxpayer value for their tax
dollar.
"One of the mostly widely held
misperceptions about Wisconsin is that state and local governments are out of control.
Misrepresent the facts often enough and long enough and soon the distortion becomes
truth," Andrew Reschovsky and Steven Deller of UW-Madison wrote in the Wausau
Herald.
"When one looks at taxes alone, it is
true Wisconsin tends to rank fairly high compared to other states. But when one looks at
fees and charges, Wisconsin ranks relatively low," they wrote. Guest column here.
For example, in Colorado, it costs $700 to register a
brand new Ford Explorer. People who move to Colorado to avoid taxes in Wisconsin are
likely to experience sticker shock not only when they register their vehicles, but when
they buy the necessities. Sales tax rates vary from community to community in Colorado. In
Colorado Springs, the city imposes a 2.5% sales tax, the state imposes a 2.9% percent tax
and El Paso County imposes a 1% rate, for a total of 6.4%. In Fort Collins and Loveland
the total rate is 6.7%. Combined state and local sales tax rates in the metropolitan
Denver area range from 3.7% to 8.15% .
Rich Eggleston of the Alliance staff was thinking of this
sort of thing when he accused JJ Blonien in a guest column in the La Crosse Tribune
of waging a misinformation campaign on behalf of TABOR. Guest column here.
Editorial and news roundup
TABOR became issue of responsibility
Before legislative leaders pulled the
plug on the issue, the "Taxpayers Bill of Rights" raised the question of whether
Wisconsin legislators are willing to do their jobs.
Former Gov. Lee S. Dreyfus,
a Republican, raised the responsibility issue in a guest column in the Waukesha Freeman
May 6 that was essentially an open letter to legislators. He wrote that he shared
legislators' concern over high taxes, but they didn't just happen.
"Who did that to us? You
have to accept the responsibility here! You passed all those budgets,"
Dreyfus wrote. "Almost all of you campaigned on a platform of restraining growth in
government and getting Wisconsin out of the top 10 nationally. You know I have great
affection and admiration for the quality of our elected representatives, but now I hear
you saying that you are not able to keep taxes and spending from increasing. Therefore we
should have a constitutional amendment so the people can do what you were elected to do.
During the Holy season, I can’t avoid the similarity of Pilate washing his hands of
the matter at hand and turning the decision over to the people.
"Get off this bandwagon before the people wake up to the fact that in supporting
TABOR you are conceding defeat in your pledges to control spending and taxes,"
Dreyfus wrote. Guest column here.
"Arbitrary formulas remove the
responsibility we have entrusted to our elected leaders and subvert our democratic system.
They simply can’t do the job we elect state legislators and the Governor to
do for us. Just look at my former home, California. What a mess,"
self-described California refugee Scott Anderson, executive director of the Wisconsin
Council of Churches, wrote in the Wisconsin State Journal May 16. Guest column here.
Dreyfus, who was elected in 1978 and served
one term, appeared at a news conference in Waukesha June 3 to elaborate on what he had
written. It was one of three news conferences held around the state to try to put a human
face on the potential effects of TABOR. |
Photo by Mike DeVries
ŠThe Capital Times
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"Why are you passing the buck?" the
former GOP governor asked lawmakers rhetorically at the news conference. "Maybe
we don't need to change the constitution. Maybe we need to change the legislators."
Story here.
And Dreyfus breathed fresh air into a
political atmosphere that had become somewhat stale, wrote Matt Pommer of The Capital
Times. Column here.
The theme proved irresistible to newspaper
editorial writers.
"Any member of the state Assembly or
Senate who backs TABOR legislation will effectively confirm that he or she is
unwilling to take responsibility for doing the basic work of a legislator," The
Capital Times wrote June 11. Editorial here.
TABOR: An
irresponsible proposal by irresponsible politicians," was the headline over
the editorial by Richard Moore in the Lakeland Times in Minocqua, which said
TABOR could "become a saber through the soul of democracy." Editorial here.
The responsibility theme echoed through the
northwoods.
"Most of these state
representatives have never been in Price County," County Board Chairman Dan Racette
said as the body passed a No TABOR resolution June 15. "How do they know what we
need?"
Board Vice-Chairwoman Mary Satterwhite
said while under TABOR, the
state would shirk its responsibility, counties would still be responsible for fulfilling
state mandates. Story here.
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Farmland tax
break revisited
Expanded Farmers' Tax Break Nickels and Dimes Homeowners
their tax break
costs homeowners
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The average homeowner will pay $10 to $15 a
year for the farmers' wooded-lot tax break that Gov. Jim Doyle signed into law in April,
the Wisconsin Realtors Association estimates. "To
continue to put the load of farm relief on the backs of homeowners isn't fair," Tom
Larson, director of regulatory and legislative affairs for the asssociation, told the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel. "We already pay more than our fair share." Story here.
Wisconsin's farmers save about $280 million a year in property taxes through existing
relief measures, according to the state Department of Revenue. The Legislative
Fiscal Bureau estimated that the bill that became Wisconsin Act 230 will reduce property
taxes on agricultural woodlots by approximately $16 million annually beginning with
December 2005 property tax bills. |
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