"This report’s theme is simple: New public policies and cooperation should encourage regional service efficiency and regional economic growth. Existing policies favor inefficient independence over efficient inter-dependence and encourage us to compete against ourselves for jobs," the task force said. "In short, Wisconsin must live within its means at the same time it grows the means to live."

The task force made six major recommendations. It said state government should:

		Authorize regional tax-base growth sharing;
		Modernize Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) for metropolitan and rural use;
		Link shared revenue growth to the percentage of state budget growth;
		Achieve greater shared revenue equity;
		Use shared revenue to reward service sharing; and
		Encourage delivering public services on  functional rather than political lines.

"State policies should reflect the reality that Wisconsin’s economic strength begins in the communities and regions, and that regions compete globally," the task force said regarding its first recommendation. "Growth sharing tax policies have been successful in other states such as Minnesota and are easily applied to metropolitan areas. Growth sharing also can be tied to support for regional services or infrastructure and therefore encourage service sharing."

Appleton Mayor Tim Hanna, a member of the task force, told the Appleton Post-Crescent the task force blueprint will not solve Wisconsin's immediate fiscal problems.

“But what it does is provides a framework for a better long-term fiscal future for the state of Wisconsin,” Mayor Hanna said. For the Post-Crescent story, look here.

For the task force's summary and major recommendations, go here. For the complete report, go here. For a comparison of key points in the task force report and planks of the Alliance legislative agenda, look here. For background on the task force, go here.

Regional tax-base sharing "can both enhance the equalizing effects of statewide aid systems and decrease the incentives for local governments to engage in wasteful competition for tax base," Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce wrote in their  January, 2002 study, Wisconsin Metropatterns.

Since 1971, they noted, local governments in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have contributed 40% of their commercial-industrial growth to a regional pool, and the money has been redistributed back based on local tax base per capita.

"Tax-base-poor communities get back more than they paid in to the pool, while tax-base-rich communities get back less," Orfield and Luce wrote. "Because all communities keep 60% of the growth, the program allows municipalities to cover the costs of development, but, because they lose 40%, the program reduces the incentives for inter-local competition for tax base."

In Wisconsin's metropolitan areas, sharing 40% of all growth (not just commercial-industrial) for a single year would produce a significant pool.  Here are some figures we put together for the Kettl Commission:

For Ed's September, 2000, memo to Don Kettl and West Allis Mayor Jeannette Bell on tax-base growth sharing, look here. For Metropatterns history and more on our issues, click on one of the buttons to the left on our home page.