The Milwaukee Post

May 19, 2017 • Milwaukee County Post • 9 Undemocratic ICC has gained voice at expense of County Board To the editor: I write to thank the Milwaukee County Post and writer Dave Fidlin for the May 12 article covering the Intergovernmental Cooperation Council of Milwaukee County regarding the proposal for workforce devel- opment changes and the split between Mayor Tom Barrett and the City of Milwaukee and County Executive Chris Abele. This council started as an informal gathering of 19 city mayors and village presidents along with the county executive to share information and later to keep informed of countywide services such as animal control and regional sewer and water issues among others. This body is no longer just an informal gathering of executives, but was given leg- islative authority over county-owned real estate transfers in the prior biennial state budget. The ICC now appoints signatories to co-sign deeds for any county property that is not zoned parkland along with either the county executive or controller removing the checks and balances of leg- islative review. The ICC basically gives each member one vote. This is uniquely undemocratic because the City of Milwaukee, with about 60 percent of the population of the county, has the same vote as the smallest cities such as St. Francis, which has a total popu- lation of under 10,000. Even worse, almost no news outlet covers the proceedings, and as a member of the Preserve Our Parks board, I can attest that it is difficult to obtain agendas or even know where to request them. Fidlin's fine reporting on a last-minute agenda addition underlined this undemocratic process at work. The ICC has become a vehicle for fur- ther state interference in the local county governance of shared services. In displac- ing more and more power from the county- wide elected authority of the County Board, the state has empowered a uniquely undemocratic body that has the potential for unfairly distributing the wealth of countywide investment to the favor or dis- favor of one city. The threats to county park zoning was only the start. I applaud and encourage your future reporting on the ICC. Patricia Jursik Former Milwaukee County supervisor Cudahy When given a choice between streetcar and public safety, there is no real choice To the editor: Public spending on the streetcar remains an issue. How much has already been spent to date? The project budget is about $128 million. For a 2.5-mile route? How much money has been allocated by the federal government? In 2015, Mayor Tom Barrett and Aldermen Willie Wade, Nik Kovac, Bob Baumann, Ashanti Hamilton, Milele Coggs, Jose Perez, Russell Stamper, Terry Witkowsi and Michael Murphy all extolled the virtues of this wonderful transporta- tion project while promising jobs, jobs, jobs — high-paying jobs. So I ask, how many workers are expected to be hired? How much will they be paid? How long will these jobs last? Will these jobs be for work- ers from the City of Milwaukee or Milwaukee County? How many streetcars will be in use on opening day? What is the cost of each streetcar? The taxpayers of Milwaukee were told: This won't cost you anything; this will be all federal dollars we are are spending. OK, so then when I renewed my license plate, why was I made to pay a new $30 "wheel tax" to fund transportation-related proj- ects? On May 5, Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan wrote in the Post, "we simply no longer have the police resources to combat the public safety challenges here in Milwaukee." Should our money go for police to keep us safe in our own homes or for a streetcar? Where does our mayor and the City Council think people would rather live? Dorothy T. Seidl Milwaukee OPINION LETTERS TO THE EDITOR By OWEN B. ROBINSON After weeks of speculation and trial bal- loons, the Wisconsin Assembly leadership released a plan called "Road to a Flat Tax." The plan was primarily authored by state Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, and cob- bles together some 30 ideas with the prom- ise of fixing the state's long-term trans- portation funding issues and cutting taxes. It has become fashionable in Washington, and now in Madison, to tackle every issue with these massive omnibus bills that are just complicated and opaque enough to provide politicians cover from contentious political issues. The Road to a Flat Tax plan is no different. It packages some truly terrific and transformative pro- posals with a few policy and political duds with the hope of convincing legislators to pass the package with the excuse that most of it is good. Let us start with the great parts of this proposal. The Road to a Flat Tax does just that. It would eliminate the state property tax, as Gov. Scott Walker has proposed, and gradually move Wisconsin to a flat 3.95 percent income tax over the next decade. It does so by eliminating and changing several major tax credits and phasing out four of the five tax brackets. Wisconsin would end up with a fair and flat income tax. Wisconsin's Republicans are not ambitious enough to eliminate the state income tax like seven other states, but a flat income tax is the next best thing. The Assembly Republicans' plan also repeals Wisconsin's prevailing wage law for state projects, which would save taxpayers at least $300 million per biennium, according to a 2015 study by Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. The plan eliminates 180 positions from the Department of Transportation, which does not save any money yet, but gives the department more flexibility to reduce spending in the future. It reduces the state's minimum markup law as it applies to gasoline (more on that later), lowers the gas tax, imposes a moratorium on round- abouts, imposes a fee on electric and hybrid vehicles and eliminates the ability of local governments to enact new wheel taxes. Then there is the bad part of the propos- al. The Road to a Flat Tax includes an intri- cate change to the way the state taxes gaso- line that results in an overall tax increase. For the first time, the state would impose the state sales tax on gasoline. This is esti- mated to generate about $600 million in revenue over the biennium. In order to off- set some of that increase, the state would reduce the gas tax by 4.8 cents, thus shav- ing off $278 million of the increase. It would also change the minimum markup law to a mandatory 3 percent markup instead of the combined 9.18 percent. This would save consumers another roughly $50 million at the pump while cutting into the profits of gasoline retailers and whole- salers. The end result after all of those changes is that Wisconsinites would see a tax increase of about $330 million per bienni- um. The increase in funding would be directed to paying down Wisconsin's debt. Bear in mind, however, that funds that go into the Transportation Fund are fungible. Although the tax increase is allocated to debt reduction, that means that the money that would have been spent on debt service without the tax increase will now be spent on current transportation projects. The tax increase to be spent on trans- portation has long been the ambition of Assembly Republican leadership and it is at the heart of this proposal. Packaging it with a bevy of other tremendously positive initiatives appears designed to pull the tax increase through a reluctant Republican caucus. Rep. Kooyenga should be commended for advancing so many great ideas. Repealing the state's prevailing wage law, implement- ing a flat income tax, eliminating the state property tax, and many other parts of the Road to a Flat Tax would be tremendously beneficial for Wisconsinites. But there is no rational reason, other than for political brinkmanship, to amalgamate all of these ideas into a single "take it or leave it" pro- posal. The Legislature should take up each piece of the Road to a Flat Tax as separate bills and then vote on them based on their merits. Good legislation that would benefit Wisconsinites should not be weighed down by legislation that would not pass on its own. (Owen B. Robinson is a West Bend resi- dent whose column appears occasionally in The Milwaukee County Post. He can be reached at owen@bootsandsabers.com.) Traveling a rough road to a flat tax Robinson

• Cover