TABOR: Reality v. Twilight Zone

Alliance tackles consolidation

League board backs regional sharing

Alliance rehires Tenuta & Associates

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Alliance cities raised their budgets just 1.5%, and their levies just 2.4%, the latter despite shared revenue cuts and double-digit increases in health insurance costs.

Will they be able to repeat that feat this fall?  I don't know.   I do know that city leaders across the state are trying their darndest to hold down taxes.  In some cases that will mean fewer cops on the beat, reduced hours at the public library and fewer workers to plow the streets this winter. At the same time, city leaders remain worried that state budget cuts will reduce property tax relief, leading to more cuts in services and higher taxes at the local level.

2005 Session: Talk or Action?

Come January, it will be plain that local government needs more than talk from state government. Budgets that have been or soon will be submitted to city councils and village boards across the state demonstrate the difficult spot in which communities find themselves.

In Racine, Mayor Gary Becker is seeking to close one fire station and require all city employees to contribute to their health insurance costs. His budget is 2.5% above last year's —  within $111 of the state's expenditure restraint limits, which are virtually the same as the property tax "freeze" limits, but without the political spin. That means a $112 increase in the budget would cost Racine $2.5 million in state aid.

Mayor Tim Hanna faces the same dilemma in Appleton. In order to fill one of four vacant police officer's positions, Appleton's police department has to give up a community service officer and a part-time employee. Appleton's budget delays repaving Mason Street for a year, but it also lives within state expenditure restraint limits.

Chippewa Falls, which is not an Alliance member, is facing an estimated $750,000 budget shortfall, and it has contracted with the UW-Eau Claire Political Research Institute to gather feedback from city residents on how to handle the problem. The UW-Eau Claire's survey presented residents with options: raise taxes a given amount or close the city swimming pool. Or the zoo. Or the museum, to cite three options.

"When the state Legislature goes back to work we will no doubt see another effort to play to the crowd and impose a "Taxpayers Bill of Rights" on local municipalities and hamstring the decision-making powers of local officials," the Racine Journal Times wrote.  "We would urge them not to. As (their) budgets show, the city and county of Racine are already making hard choices."

Grim alternatives for grim times in the real world.  "Out-of-control spending" in the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling, meet TABOR

Alliance tackles cooperation, consolidation

League Board backs Alliance regional sharing plan

With just one dissenting vote, the board of directors of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities Oct. 27 endorsed the Alliance of Cities' proposal to distribute growth in state shared revenue to cities, villages and towns on a regional basis as an incentive to reduce local competition for economic growth, and work together to improve our regional economies.

We call it a formula for cooperation and growth.

Alliance executive director Ed Huck has been shopping the plan to Gov. Jim Doyle's administration and legislative leaders.

"There's interest in it by both parties, but no commitment," he told Amy Rinard of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"But, it's still early," Rinard added in a column, which is located here.

For the complete Alliance agenda, click here.

Alliance rehires lobbyist Jim Tenuta At the organization's September meetings in Sheboygan, Alliance members voted to rehire lobbyist Jim Tenuta and his firm, Tenuta & Associates, to help lobby Alliance issues in the coming session of the Legislature. Tenuta, 49, grew up in Racine,  graduated from UW-Stevens Point and attended graduate school at UW-Superior. He was a reporter for the Superior Evening Telegram before coming to Madison to work for the Legislature, where he rose to the position of director of the Senate Republican Caucus. He has been lobbying since 1993. The Alliance's contract with Tenuta & Associates runs from January through 2006. Jim Tenuta