Posted on 08/08/2003 5:55:22 AM PDT by ninenot
Kenosha - Promising to start a tax revolution in Wisconsin, hundreds of taxpayers fed up with the governor's veto of strict limits on local property taxes showed their displeasure during a rally Thursday night.
Chanting "Support the freeze," a crowd of more than 400 listened to legislators and rally organizers complain about taxes.
"The taxpayers have woke up and are revolting," said Ralph Lisowski, who helped organize the event at a Kenosha restaurant.
"Our intent is to start a new revolution with a shout heard 'round the state," Lisowski said as the crowd cheered.
Outside the Parkway Chateau Brat Stop as folks walked into the rally, more than 100 people clad in red shirts marched in a circle with signs that said: "More Cuts Will Hurt Kids" and "Let Locally Elected Leaders Make LOCAL decisions."
While legislators and Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle debate the Republican-proposed limits on taxes, residents on both sides of the issue expressed their views Thursday by picketing, chanting, waving signs and wearing red or blue shirts.
Supporters of the tax limits wore blue because it signifies a freeze and represents blue-collar workers, Lisowski said. Those in favor of Doyle's veto wore red for contrast with blue.
Regardless of apparel color, the sentiments were fervent on each side.
David Singer, a Kenosha County Board member, marched with those who backed Doyle's veto because he said he supports local control. Serving his third two-year term, Singer said Kenosha County has managed to control its costs while the state's budget has spiraled into a $3.2 billion deficit.
"The state already controls most of the taxes, and now they want to control property taxes," said Singer as he walked with his Dalmatian, Cleo, who, like Singer, was wearing red.
Neal Skrenes, a Kenosha middle school teacher, said he worries about the effect tax limits might have on school districts. He said enrollment in the Kenosha School District is rising because families are moving to the area.
"That means we'll need more schools and more staffing. How can we do that without raising money?" he asked.
But Bill Peterson of Pleasant Prairie said he's not against teachers, he's against high taxes.
"I'm 100% for education, but I'm getting taxed to death," said Peterson, who said the property tax bill on his home has risen from $84 to $3,300 since he bought it in 1956.
"We bought our home to live in in our retirement and to die there, and they're taxing us out of our home," Peterson said.
Several Republican legislators attended the rally, including Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer (R-West Bend) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), who wore yellow stickers that read "Support the Freeze."
"You're starting the Wisconsin tax revolution tonight," Darling said before leading the crowd in a chant of "Freeze it!"
The rally was one of two scheduled for this week in the Milwaukee area. On Saturday, Citizens for Responsible Government will hold a 2 p.m. rally at Serb Memorial Hall in Milwaukee.
On Thursday, Republican leaders in the Capitol scheduled an override vote for Tuesday. In order to overturn Doyle's veto, it would take a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and Assembly. Republicans control the Senate 18-15 and the Assembly 59-40.
Republicans need 22 votes in the Senate to override, which means four Democrats would have to join the GOP. So far, Democratic Sens. Tim Carpenter of Milwaukee and Jeff Plale of South Milwaukee have said they will vote to override the veto or are leaning that way.
An override vote will be held first in the Senate and then, if needed, in the Assembly. If the Senate fails to override the veto, no Assembly vote would be taken.
The proposed three-year limit on local property taxes was included in the 2003-'05 state budget passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Under those caps, municipalities could increase property taxes only for new construction costs or by referendum. Schools would have been allowed to increase their revenue from property taxes by 2% in the first year of the budget and 1.6% in the second.
Doyle vetoed the measure last month, saying it would strip local leaders of their decision-making ability and devastate services and programs.
And the governor hammered home those points again Thursday when he launched his own effort to rally public opinion behind his veto.
Doyle stood with mayors and uniformed emergency workers outside city halls in La Crosse and Chippewa Falls, saying he was forced to be the "grown-up in charge" in the Capitol by vetoing the Legislature's "arrogant" plan to cripple local services and public schools.
The governor was scheduled to make a similar appearance in Stevens Point today.
Doyle again predicted he would win a Tuesday state Senate vote to override his veto, saying too much is at stake now for legislators to enact the GOP plan over his objections.
"It's one thing to stick this in the budget, knowing that there's a grown-up as governor who is going to take care of it and veto it," Doyle said in Chippewa Falls. "It's another thing to say, 'OK, we're really going to cut our schools by $400 million over the next two years, we're going to tell local leaders that they're all big spendthrifts.' I think that's a very hard vote for a legislator to take."
In La Crosse, Doyle said: "It's really arrogant that people in one part of the state are telling people in another part of the state what to do."
Mayors at Doyle's side in the two cities echoed that theme.
"Shouldn't all levels of state government be focused on helping local decision-makers, rather than dictating terms and limits to how we spend your tax dollars?" asked Chippewa Falls Mayor Doug Sandvick.
A former Democratic legislator, La Crosse Mayor John Medinger, said he was developing a 2004 budget that would hold property taxes "at the level of 2003" - something Doyle has repeatedly asked all elected local officials to do voluntarily.
Steven Walters of the Journal Sentinel staff, reporting from Madison, and correspondent David Marcou, reporting from La Crosse, contributed to this report.
I love the smell of tax revolts in the morning. Good work, keep it up.
From one of the Recall propenents at the beginning of the process, I just wanted to say; you're welcome.
Sincerely,
California
You've just hit upon a major problem: handling retirement funds on a cash-flow rather than an accrural basis. Unfortunately, there's not really any 'right' way to handle the situation: there are many people who took jobs at lower salaries than they would otherwise have demanded on the basis of promised retirement benefits. It is not really fair to such people to declare that they do not deserve the benefits for which they have already paid a substantial opportunity cost if not a direct cost.
The real problem is that if a politician reduces a teacher's salary by $1,000 in exchange for extra benefits whose present-cash-value is $1,500, the books will show that the politician has reduced the budget by $1,000--not that he's increased it by $500.
BTW, speaking of cash-flow versus accrural accounting, there's a certain other retirement program which is being run on a cash-flow basis and it's going to be a whole lot worse.
The freeze seems reasonable. It even allows an increase for the schools
One freeper had a great line regarding taxation. It went "I see you have some money there. Give it to me."
I live in Massachusetts, Peoples Republic of, in the dreaded heavily liberal Northeast, Kennedy country (ick!). One of the redeeming facts about this state is that we are one of 24 that can adopt/repeal laws by referendum questions. It takes a fair amount of signatures and work but it can be done, as the following will show.
Many moons ago, we managed to pass Proposition 2 1/2, so called because it limited property taxes across the state to 2.5% per year. It can only be overridden by a vote of the taxpayers. That is rare, but it does occur. The pols have to really make a good case though! Goes to show you that even liberal weasels have a limit!! I suggest the fine folks of Wisconsin contact Barbara Anderson at the Citizens for Limited Taxation (www.cltg.org), and maybe they can give you some good ideas. CLT was directly responsible for getting Prop. 2 1/2 passed.
Even better, in the 2002 election, we repealed biligual education by a large margin (but the teachers unions and the pols are doing their best to gut the mandate from the voters. Best of all, there was a referendum question to, now get this, abolish the state income tax!! It got 45% of the vote! In Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts. The pols practically wet their pants, and are deathly afraid to raise taxes, at least in any obvious way. We are now going through the tax cuts targeted at police teachers etc, anything to hurt the voters, to get the mood of the voters to allow them to raise taxes. Naturally, we are getting lots of AFL-CIO commercials blaming Republican Mitt Romney for the cuts, and commending the Democrat-controlled legislature for overriding his "Draconian" cuts. The dirty little secret is that the Dems control everything, and there is nothing Romney can do with, or without, their say so.
The bottom line is, if Wisconsin is a referendum state, it can be done. Otherwise, you are going to have to get conservative Republicans into the Governor's office and the rest of the state offices.
By the way, next door, in Connecticut, their property taxes are ridiculous. I am talking $18 - 35 or so per $1000 of value, and that was 7 years ago when I was looking for a home. Then add one of the highest gasoline taxes, and you have a pricey state indeed.
I recall, once upon a time, meeting some guys at a really "Keen" software company in Madison WI who were about to release a new game. Since they didn't want to be "Doom"ed to pay high state taxes, though, they moved to Texas.
The political fault lines widened Friday over proposed local property tax limits, with both sides gearing up a weekend lobbying effort intense enough to draw comparisons to the down-to-the-wire haggling over the sales tax for Miller Park.The epicenter Saturday - Milwaukee's Serb Hall - is expected to play host to hundreds of people at dueling rallies in anticipation of Tuesday's scheduled state Senate vote on Republican-sponsored limits on local taxes. Smaller taxpayer rallies are scheduled in Antigo, Green Bay and other cities.
The rhetoric is ratcheting up, as business, labor, school, religious and political leaders - and ordinary citizens - join the debate in the days before senators pass judgment on Gov. Jim Doyle's veto of the limits.
"We have this giant force field around our state keeping people out," said Jim Pugh, spokesman for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which continues a statewide radio ad campaign for the tax limits. "Businesspeople considering transferring here see a much higher total tax burden than in their states."
"It's really not democratic to take away local decisions and impose a uniform rule on every locality from Madison," said Thomas Mueller, a Milwaukee priest with a social-justice coalition opposing the limits. "Supposedly, Republicans are supposed to be against big government telling everyone what to do, but that's what they're trying to do here."
Pugh said the last issue to so consume the state's political community was the Legislature's 1995 decision to create a regional sales tax to fund Miller Park. A single vote decided that question.
"This has risen to that level," he said. "It's on everybody's radar screen."
Opponents of the tax "freeze" - it actually would limit property tax increases but not freeze them - tried to gain momentum Friday by highlighting the possible impact on education.
Two studies by school groups warned of deep classroom cutbacks if the Legislature musters the two-thirds vote necessary to override Doyle's veto.
In one, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards predicted that almost 4,500 teachers statewide could be laid off in 2004-'05 if the tax limits become law. The association used Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates and its own employee data to make district-by-district projections of layoffs.
Ken Cole, the association's executive director, said it was too late to expect teacher layoffs for the upcoming school year because contracts are already in place. He acknowledged his group's figures assume that all cuts would come out of teaching staffs, but he said there weren't too many options after a decade of schools being placed under strict property tax limits.
Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) said while there was no doubt school districts would have to make some sacrifices, the association's numbers appeared to be based on the worst-case scenario. She said the state has actually increased its spending on education despite fiscal difficulties.
"I can't imagine that they're going to have to lay off all those teachers," said Darling. "What is real, and what is a scare tactic?"
Michelle Nate, the director of finance for Milwaukee Public Schools, said the report assumes all of the cuts would come from the teaching ranks and would be in the form of layoffs, instead of loss through attrition, for example.
In MPS' case, officials would have to look at cuts in a variety of areas - not just staff - if the override goes through.
Meanwhile, the Southeastern Wisconsin School Alliance, which represents about 40 districts and 230,000 students, is mailing letters to all the lawmakers, calling on them to separate K-12 public school funding from the property tax limits proposal.
The alliance projects its districts would lose $81 million if Doyle's veto is overridden.
The $81 million is the equivalent of 1,600 teaching positions, the alliance said, cuts that would hinder the quality of education.
"We wanted to point out that as decisions are being made about a property tax freeze, schools have operated under revenue caps for the last 10 years," said Kathleen Cooke, alliance co-chairman and superintendent of the Hamilton School District in Waukesha County.
Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer said school districts could find ways to reduce costs without merely slashing teaching staffs.
"I don't think it has to be just people in the classroom," said Panzer (R-West Bend). "We have administrators; we have a lot of consultants in this state. Every budget has different things in it."
Elected officials and school representatives from Milwaukee's South Shore communities strongly protested Friday the proposed three-year property tax limits and urged state senators to support the governor's veto.
Several people called the proposal a "phony" or "false" freeze and warned of its negative consequences on schools.
"What is being proposed in this tax freeze smacks of California," Cudahy Mayor Raymond Glowacki said at the news conference at South Milwaukee City Hall. "Has anybody thought of what is going to happen to the state in year four?"
California property taxes were capped in 1978 under Proposition 13. Critics say the result is that California public schools, ranked the nation's best in the 1970s, now sit among the worst.
South Milwaukee Superintendent David Ewald said his district has already cut $1.5 million from its 2003-'04 budget. Under current law, the district would lose another $400,000 in 2004-'05, and twice that amount under the Republican proposal.
Jeff Spence, president of the Milwaukee Public Schools board, said MPS already cut $48 million from the fiscal 2004 budget, and the proposed tax limits would squeeze out another $16 million.
"You can't take an oversimplistic approach . . . and expect people in our communities to survive," Spence said.
However, an organizer of a rally scheduled for Saturday in Milwaukee said the concerns voiced by school and municipal officials was nothing more than "a smoke screen."
"What we are saying to local officials is 'prioritize,' " said Chris Kliesmet, spokesman for Citizens for Responsible Government. "If they want the fire protection, education and the police protection that they're crying about in their doom-and-gloom statements, fund them first and find somewhere else to cut."
Kliesmet predicted that at least 500 people who support the GOP limits on taxes will attend a rally from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Serb Hall.
"There's an outpouring of passion from people who are saying, 'Hey, we've had enough,' " Kliesmet said. "People are saying, 'Hey, if I scream about it loud enough, they'll know I'm serious now.' I think there will be a thousand people out there."
Outside the hall, a loose coalition of interfaith religious groups, teachers unions and other public-employee unions will leaflet and perhaps picket, said Michael Rosen, an economics instructor at Milwaukee Area Technical College and president of the American Federation of Teachers, Local 212.
The counter-rally aims to highlight concerns about how tax limits would hurt critical government services.
Milwaukee Fire Chief William Wentlandt Jr., who plans to appear with the anti-limits forces, called the GOP plan "arbitrary." It effectively would take away local management control of firefighting, he said.
Meanwhile, Doyle hit the road again Friday in support of his veto, stopping outside Madison and in Stevens Point and Green Bay.
Speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony for a construction laborer training center north of Madison, Doyle said the GOP plan would drive the state's economy "right off a cliff" by "putting the brakes on economic development and killing thousands of jobs in our state."
Doyle, who was in La Crosse and Chippewa Falls on Thursday, said he's getting mail and calls from people on both sides of the issue.
Doyle and Senate Minority Leader Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) both said they were confident the Senate would uphold Doyle's veto Tuesday.
If the Senate does override the veto, the Assembly, which Republicans control by a 59-40 margin, must do likewise for the GOP plan to become law.
Journal Sentinel reporters Nahal Toosi, Mike Johnson, Jesse Garza, Sarah Carr, Kelly Wells and Esther Chou, and correspondent Kevin Murphy contributed to this report.
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