Worse roads and higher local taxes? Welcome to NE WIsconsin!

As Wisconsin Republicans continue take their sweet time in finishing the overdue state budget (now at 52 days and counting), local governments don’t have such a luxury. Local city officials will likely release their proposed budgets in the next few weeks and have to finalize them by late November, and past budget cuts from the state means that many fixes are needed on local roads, without a lot of funds available to take care of those issues. And one of the places that is feeling the crunch the worst is northeastern Wisconsin.

The Door County Peninsula Pulse notes that Sturgeon Bay’s City Engineer said last month that the city has to hope its streets hold out for 50-60 years with the current funding system, and Mayor Thad Birmingham says in the article it’s even worse than that, given Wisconsin’s lack of flexibility on property taxes.

“That lifespan gets stretched out more each year as our revenue stays the same,” Birmingham said. “So that 50 – 60 year lifespan could end up being 100 years.”

Prior to 2010, local governments could increase their tax levy by 3 percent of the previous year’s levy. In 2010, Gov. Scott Walker lowered that limit to 0, allowing Wisconsin municipalities to increase property taxes only at the rate of net new construction in the community. So even as the cost of fuel, materials, services, and human resources increases, budgets do not unless there is significant new construction. Levy increases were first capped at 3 percent by Gov. Jim Doyle in 2006.

“How can you keep up with anything – roads, parks, sewer – if you can’t increase revenue to pay for expense increases?” Birmingham said.

Now, just like with schools, a local government can go to the voters to raise property taxes above the limit. The Town of Liberty Grove in Door County did this with success in 2014, but that’s not something that most local governments in Wisconsin choose to deal with, and they have turned to a couple of other methods to scrape together revenue in recent years in Wisconsin.

One involves new wheel taxes, which have been added in 4 Wisconsin cities and villages in 2017 along with all of Milwaukee County. That follows several other places that put in wheel taxes in both 2015 and 2016.

Another option has been for counties to put in new local sales tax, if they hadn’t done so already. The Door County article notes that Kewaunee County’s new sales tax was as a last resort after Act 10 “savings” and other budget cuts couldn’t fill the potholes and other needs the county had.

In 2016 Kewaunee County had to implement a .5 percent sales tax to plug a gaping hole in its budget that remained even after the county cut 31 positions from county staff and transferred $600,000 from its highway department budget. Kewaunee’s problem was exacerbated when the Kewaunee Power Station closed in 2013, costing the county a lucrative utility fee.

In addition to Kewaunee, Sheboygan County put in new 0.5% sales tax this year, Brown County agreed to put one in starting in January 2018, and Manitowoc and Calumet Counties are also considering putting in a sales tax as part of this Fall’s budget deliberations. If all of these counties go through with sales taxes, there will only be 4 counties left in Wisconsin without one.


Where'd all these new taxes come from?

There also is an option for some tourist-related communities of Wisconsin to put in their own sales tax to pay for the extra needs that tourist towns have. This is a “premier resort tax”, and the Cities of Bayfield, Eagle River, Wisconsin Dells and Rhinelander along with the Villages of Lake Delton and Stockholm all have been able to levy a tax. The Door County article notes that Sturgeon Bay is consider such a tourist tax to try to keep its roads fixed, and voters in La Crosse County signaled approval in a non-binding referendum in April.

However, the State Legislature would have to sign off on such a measure (likely in the state budget), and given that more than a few GOPs in the Legislature are already huffy about the increased amount of school referenda and wheel taxes, it may reduce the chances of a new premier resort tax area being allowed for 2018…if we ever pass a budget.

But it’s the WisGOPs’ own fault that the need for new local taxes exists in the first place. For 3 budgets (and likely a 4th), WisGOP has chosen to defund aids to local governments as a means to pay for their tax cuts to the rich and corporate, and to claim they kept property taxes in check. The new wheel taxes and sales taxes are the natural outcome of this mentality, and now the GOPs are whining because their ALEC “low-tax” fantasies are crumbling in the real world. Not just with the higher taxes, but also the deteriorating roads.

Maybe a better idea is to get rid of these GOP clowns in the Legislature and replace them with people who understand the connection between state and local funding of services, and won't shortchange local governments stupid, Norquistian poses. All of those places in the 920 that have new sales and wheel taxes would be a good place to start seeing voters step up and force these changes, as throughout the 2010s this area has sent Republicans to “represent" the area, and all they've gotten back are potholes and more money being taken out of their pockets.