My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

I have been trying to be patient. Truly, I have. But what is going on with the Republicans in the state Legislature?

 

The state has been projecting a major budget surplus for some time. At the beginning of the year, it was expected to be about $7.1 billion. At last count, they have lowered that forecast to about $6.9 billion. In either case, it is a lot of money. It is a lot of money forcibly confiscated from Wisconsinites through taxation far and above what the government budgeted to fund the state government with all of its girth.

 

When confronted with a pile of unspent cash, politicians are incapable of resisting their desires to spend it. The Democrats are ideologically consistent in this regard. They believe that more government is better government, so any time they can find an excuse to make government bigger, they are going to seize it.

 

[…]

 

I ask again, what is going on with the Republicans in the state Legislature? The state has been projecting a major surplus for over a year. The voters returned the Republicans to the state Legislature with even larger majorities than they had the previous session. Those Republicans have had six months since that election to come up with a plan to return the surplus to the taxpayers. Most of those Republicans were in the legislature last session and have had even more time to contemplate.

 

Where is the Republican plan — coordinated and supported by Republican majorities in both houses of the Legislature — to return the budget surplus? Where is the refund? Where is the systemic tax reform? Milwaukee did not elect those Republican majorities. The Brewers did not elect those Republican majorities. Local governments did not elect those Republican majorities.

 

Plain, old grassroots Republicans elected those Republican majorities, and it is past time for those elected Republicans to deliver on their promises of smaller government. We have been patient long enough.

Here is my full column that ran earlier in the week in the Washington County Daily News.

A couple of weeks ago this column criticized the Shared Revenue bill advancing through the state Assembly. Since then, the bill has gotten worse and the momentum seems to be on the side of disaster. One can only hope that it falls apart under its own craptaculance.

 

Readers of this column will recall that Assembly Bill 245 was negotiated in private for several months by the Assembly Republican leadership, Milwaukee Democratic leadership, and some other stakeholders — not including the governor’s office. The thrust of the bill is that the state will dramatically increase Shared Revenue for local governments while imposing some restrictions on them. For the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County, the state would further allow them to impose a massive sales tax increase if the voters approve and in exchange for further restrictions.

 

Beyond that, the bill would end the personal property tax in which personal property is subject to property taxes. The personal property tax is a particular burden for businesses that have a substantial amount of equipment. The bill would also limit the power of local health officials to close businesses, grant the legislative Joint Finance Committee and local governments some control over the State Stewardship program, prohibit most advisory referenda for local governments, and a host of other things. As the bill is crafted, Gov. Tony Evers cannot use his line-item veto to carve it up. The governor must either sign the bill or veto the entire thing. After the bill was announced a few weeks ago, feverish negotiations began with Governor Evers’ office to try to incorporate any changes the governor might want to induce him to sign the bill. The root of the contention is fairly simple. The Republicans and the governor seem to agree that a boost in Shared Revenue is a good thing. The notion that Republicans should work for smaller government seems to have been eschewed in favor of filling up the trough. The governor disagrees with some of the smaller provisions in the bill that Republicans favor, but they are somewhat lost in the bigger issues.

 

The primary bone of contention has to do with the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County. The problem that Republicans are trying to fix is that both local governments are on a trajectory to go bankrupt due to their lavish pension obligations grated to government employees for decades. The Republicans want Milwaukee City and County to ask the voters if they will increase their local sales taxes to meet those pension obligations. If the voters agree, then the money must be used to retire the pension debt and other requirements will be imposed like requiring that new employees join the solvent state retirement system, prohibiting spending more money on the city trolley and maintaining law enforcement.

 

Governor Evers wants all of the money to bail out the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County, but he does not want any of the restrictions. Furthermore, the governor does not want to have to ask the voters about raising taxes. He wants to allow Milwaukee City and County to just raise the taxes without asking for fear that the voters might say, “no.”

 

As a concession to the governor, the bill that finally passed the Assembly kept most of the deal for Milwaukee intact but spends more and watered down some of the restrictions. The Assembly Republicans negotiated and drafted the new version in private and rushed it to a vote without anyone having time to even read it. There is absolutely no reason to rush the bill through and the “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” mentality is exactly the kind of bad governance that gives politicians their slimy reputations.

 

Through all of this, nobody apparently thought to ask the Senate Republicans what they want in a bill. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu has expressed concerns for the bill and seems to share Governor Evers’ worry about asking the voters in Milwaukee before raising their taxes. It seems unlikely that the Senate will pass an identical bill to the Assembly thus forcing a reconciliation before it ever reaches the governor’s desk.

 

What are we doing here? Republicans are clamoring for a massive spending increase and trying to bail out the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County for decades of terrible policies? The ornamental conservative policies being hung on the bill are a glittery distraction from the abysmal spending and opening the floodgates for local tax increases.

 

If the bill ever reached Evers’ desk, let us hope that he will veto it to put an end to the Republicans’ momentary lunacy.

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. It’s about the continuing machinations over the Shared Revenue bill in the Wisconsin legislature. Here’s a taste:

As a concession to the governor, the bill that finally passed the Assembly kept most of the deal for Milwaukee intact but spends more and watered down some of the restrictions. The Assembly Republicans negotiated and drafted the new version in private and rushed it to a vote without anyone having time to even read it. There is absolutely no reason to rush the bill through and the “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” mentality is exactly the kind of bad governance that gives politicians their slimy reputations.

 

Through all of this, nobody apparently thought to ask the Senate Republicans what they want in a bill. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu has expressed concerns for the bill and seems to share Governor Evers’ worry about asking the voters in Milwaukee before raising their taxes. It seems unlikely that the Senate will pass an identical bill to the Assembly thus forcing a reconciliation before it ever reaches the governor’s desk.

 

What are we doing here? Republicans are clamoring for a massive spending increase and trying to bail out the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County for decades of terrible policies? The ornamental conservative policies being hung on the bill are a glittery distraction from the abysmal spending and opening the floodgates for local tax increases.

 

If the bill ever reached Evers’ desk, let us hope that he will veto it to put an end to the Republicans’ momentary lunacy.

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week:

After lengthy, private discussions with legislative Democrats and local leaders, including the Democratic leaders of Milwaukee, the Republican leaders of the Legislature have released a comprehensive and intricate plan to reshape the state’s shared revenue program for decades to come. While the reasons for the effort are laudable, it perpetuates a political arrangement in which everybody wins except the taxpayers. It is a bill with fundamental flaws that should be rejected.

 

Shared revenue is a rather ridiculous Wisconsin state scheme where the state collects a bunch of sales and income taxes and then distributes much of it back to local governments with an archaic formula that nobody likes. This column has long advocated the abolishment of shared revenue in exchange for something far simpler, but there is too much power wrapped up in the distribution of shared revenue for its abolishment to be considered. This bill is a good example of that power being wielded.

 

The primary objectives of the Republicans’ bill, Assembly Bill 245, are threefold. First, it would provide the largest increase in shared revenue in decades in exchange for municipalities spending that money on law enforcement and first responders.

 

Second, it would allow the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County to ask the voters to raise the sales tax to pay for their unfunded pension liabilities in exchange for making all future employees join the well-managed state retirement system. Third, it would provide a huge incentive program for local governments who innovate by consolidating or combining services.

 

There are some other things in the bill that are good, like barring local health officials from closing businesses for more than 14 days without approval by elected governments, and allowing local governments a say when the state Stewardship Program decides to buy a slew of land and remove it from the tax rolls, but the grand bargain is more money if local governments do what elected state leaders want them to do.

 

The first bargain is that local government can get more money if they spend that money on law enforcement and first responders.

 

The problem with that bargain is that not every community needs more law enforcement. Some communities are declining in population or have overstaffed law enforcement agencies. The goal of this provision is to push back on the defund-the-police movement that has infected our liberal communities, but the solution in this bill would just have state taxpayers pumping money into local communities to pay for services that they have rejected.

 

The second bargain would allow Milwaukee city and County to ask the taxpayers to jack up sales taxes to pay for their unfunded pension liabilities. The problem the state legislators are trying to fix is that the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County have grossly mismanaged their pension obligations to the point that they are underfunded by $1.14 billion and $331 million, respectively. These pension obligations are malignant and starving the rest of their budgets of funding for vital services. The bargain would force these governments to stop making the problem worse by having new employees join the Wisconsin Retirement System and raise sales taxes to pay for the pensions.

 

The problem is that it is already within these local officials’ power to fix the problem by having new employees join the WRS. They have chosen not to do so. The proposed solution would result in a huge tax increase on city and county residents with absolutely no increased benefit to them. Once again, the taxpayers would bear the burden of decades of political mismanagement.

 

The third bargain would create a $300 million slush fund for local governments to do what they should already be doing — looking for ways to consolidate and economize services for the benefit of their citizens. Some local governments have already been progressive in this regard, but the additional money would only go to the laggards. Furthermore, if consolidating and economizing a government service results in efficiencies, why would the taxpayers pay more money for it?

 

Republican legislators are attempting to force local government leaders to do the things that they should already be doing by incentivizing them with more money to spend. This is a government solution, for government, by government. Experience tells us that the restrictions and covenants will eventually be eroded or circumvented, but the spending will remain forevermore. There is nothing so eternal as a government spending program.

 

Necessity is the mother of invention. As long as the state taxpayers keep bailing out the bad decisions of local government leaders, they will continue to make bad decisions.

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

After lengthy, private discussions with legislative Democrats and local leaders, including the Democratic leaders of Milwaukee, the Republican leaders of the Legislature have released a comprehensive and intricate plan to reshape the state’s shared revenue program for decades to come. While the reasons for the effort are laudable, it perpetuates a political arrangement in which everybody wins except the taxpayers. It is a bill with fundamental flaws that should be rejected.

 

Shared revenue is a rather ridiculous Wisconsin state scheme where the state collects a bunch of sales and income taxes and then distributes much of it back to local governments with an archaic formula that nobody likes. This column has long advocated the abolishment of shared revenue in exchange for something far simpler, but there is too much power wrapped up in the distribution of shared revenue for its abolishment to be considered. This bill is a good example of that power being wielded.

 

The primary objectives of the Republicans’ bill, Assembly Bill 245, are threefold. First, it would provide the largest increase in shared revenue in decades in exchange for municipalities spending that money on law enforcement and first responders.

 

Second, it would allow the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County to ask the voters to raise the sales tax to pay for their unfunded pension liabilities in exchange for making all future employees join the well-managed state retirement system. Third, it would provide a huge incentive program for local governments who innovate by consolidating or combining services.

 

There are some other things in the bill that are good, like barring local health officials from closing businesses for more than 14 days without approval by elected governments, and allowing local governments a say when the state Stewardship Program decides to buy a slew of land and remove it from the tax rolls, but the grand bargain is more money if local governments do what elected state leaders want them to do.

 

[…]

 

Republican legislators are attempting to force local government leaders to do the things that they should already be doing by incentivizing them with more money to spend. This is a government solution, for government, by government. Experience tells us that the restrictions and covenants will eventually be eroded or circumvented, but the spending will remain forevermore. There is nothing so eternal as a government spending program.