GOPs roll out shared revenue plans. It's a decent start, even if the strings attached are obnoxious.

So we've now gotten more details about what Legislative Republicans want to do to fix Wisconsin's broken shared revenue system. And it seems like there are more funds than we thought, but the aids will be strictly targeted.

Republicans were originally talking about a $200 million boost to county and municipal aid. That has increased to $227 million.

The state expected to pay locals $753 million through that aid in 2023. Under the plan, the additional $227 million would be split up using a formula that would benefit smaller communities. The new money also would be dedicated to expenses such as law enforcement, fire protection, EMTs, public works and transportation, according to sources....

The Assembly GOP plan also includes a one-time transfer of $300 million to what’s been dubbed an innovation fund. That would reward communities that combine services.

Most of the funding comes from using 1 of the 5 cents per dollar collected in Wisconsin sales tax over the next 2 years, and sending it to the shared revenue pot. I would guess that this $300 million "innovation fund" is additional one-time funding, but we'll see what the bill tells us.

As I mentioned before, what about the local governments that already "innovated" and increased efficiencies, or runs things better on their own? They get nothing from this $300 million? And is one of the "innovations" replacing newer wheel taxes that many communities have had to take on to fix their roads? Because that's certainly something I would want in there.

AJ Bayatpour of Channel 58 in Milwaukee has plenty of experience discussing this situation from his time as the main guy covering the Capitol for TV in Madison, and he put together a very good summary of the situation.

Wisconsin currently divides $753 million annually among its counties and municipalities. That shared revenue figure has been frozen since 2004. Under the plan unveiled Thursday, 20% of Wisconsin's state sales tax collections would go to local governments. That would amount to an estimated $1.5 billion. Without a bill, it's still unclear how the state would divide that new shared revenue pot, but Vos and other Assembly GOP leaders said at different press events Thursday every community in the state would receive at least a 10% increase in state funding.

Governor Evers' plan for shared revenue allowed for Milwaukee (and all other Wisconsin communities and counties with ore than 30,000 people) to have a 0.5% sales tax, if their voters approved of it in a referendum. Interestingly, the GOP plan allows for the City to have a much larger sales tax, but I don't see provisions listed about anywhere else in the state.

The sales taxes would have to pass referendum. @MMAC_Chamber President Tim Sheehy tells me talks are still ongoing as to whether that vote would be from the general public, or if the common council and county board could take those votes.

— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) April 27, 2023

But WisGOP being who they are, they attach a lot of strings to that Milwaukee funding.

There would also be a mandated minimum number of school resource officers.

County Executive Crowley told reporters afterward he's still negotiating to remove provisions that don't directly affect city and county operations, such as that one.

— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) April 27, 2023

Given that Milwaukee Public Schools is its own entity outside of both the City and the County, I would agree that it is silly to have MPS items in here. Unless the WisGOPs want to have the local government take over MPS, which is a whole different fight and isn't worth stuffing into what will likely be an already-fragile coalition of support for the shared revenue package.

And the streetcar stuff is tired and lame. What if the Feds want to give 80%-90% of the funding to improve and extend the streetcar, which increases efficiency and ridership, and the City just has to match the rest of that? They can't? Give me a break. But Milwaukee's in desperate need of the assistance, and the restrictions aren't something that should be a deal-breaker if bankruptcy and/or massive deinvestment of the state's largest metro area and tourist destination is the other option.

Another facet of the shared revenue plan is that Jeramey Jannene and Graham Kilmer of Urban Milwaukee say the GOP plan would give more funds to smaller, rural communities (which have more GOPs representing them) than the Evers proposal.

The proposal would increase shared revenue payments by at least 10% to counties and cities across the state and connect the total provided to sales tax collections, allowing the total to grow with inflation.....

An estimated 47% of the new shared revenue, according to Rep. John Spiros (R-Marshfield), would be targeted at communities with less than 5,000 residents. Evers’ proposal had more evenly targeted distributing the funds.

I also want to go back to Evers' comments from last month on the shared revenue issue, and the need to add funding to an outdated, underfunded system.

Evers’ shared revenue proposal would amount to the largest increase in state aid for local communities in decades, according to an analysis from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. The dollar amount has decreased over decades, from more than $1 billion in the 1990s to about $900 million today, without factoring for inflation, per that report.

"That's crazy," Evers said on Tuesday. "I don't care if you’re a 300-people township or the city of Milwaukee, you cannot operate with that."

Agree with that, and it seems that WisGOPs have finally admitted that as well. And it's rare enough that we get to that step, given the BubbleWorld and game-playing that is the typical WisGOP response.

I see that Evers' request for a 2% increase on levy limits and new local sales taxes are among the 500+ items that the GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee plans to remove from the budget next week, but no idea if this shared revenue package is going to be put into the biennial state budget (which may make it harder for WisGOPs in the Legislature to vote against and for WisDems to formally vote for), or if they do it as a supplemental, standalone bill (which makes it harder for Evers to outright veto and/or modify, but also gives room for some GOPs to vote no and other Dems to vote yes).

It's not the sexiest item to discuss, but the shared revenue discussion is likely the most important one going on at the Capitol in 2023. And it's the details and the sausage-making that is coming over the next months that will decide if we get the reforms that we so badly need when it comes to funding our local governments in Wisconsin.