• News tips, submissions
• Questions, comments
• Contact webmaster

• Belt tightening not extra taxes for budget fix say local legislators
• School referendums fail in Ellsworth and Plum City

By Judy Wiff, Regional editor

More taxes aren't the answer.

Spending must be cut, say local lawmakers as the Legislature and Gov. Jim Doyle's administration tackle a biennial budget deficit projected at $652 million.

Since last week, Wisconsin legislative leaders and Doyle's administration have started discussions on three disparate proposals to solve the shortfall.

In early March the Department of Administration announced an expected biennium shortfall due to lower than estimated tax revenues.

Doyle's administration offered a plan that begins by reducing funding from executive branch agency appropriations by $330.4 million over the biennium.

That includes $200 million in cuts state agencies were required to make under the budget signed in October.

The governor is also proposing a 0.7 percent assessment on hospital revenues to help the state secure an estimated $700 million in new federal revenue over the biennium. That tax would sunset in 2009.

The governor's plan calls for taking money from the transportation fund, additional bonding for transportation projects, an increased business tax and saving $15 million by refinancing the tobacco bonds.

"There's no need to drag this out," said Rep. Kitty Rhoades, R-Hudson, last week.

She said the Assembly repair bill, adopted on a 51-46 vote March 13, includes no new or higher taxes and no extra borrowing and leaves it up to Doyle to cut $200 million from general spending.

"It's the credit card," said Rhoades, dismissing the attempt to borrow rather than cut spending.

The Assembly proposal does dip into the state's "rainy day" fund, admitted Rhoades: "Our proposal uses quite a bit of that, saying it's raining."

While the Assembly repair bill calls for spending cuts, Rhoades said it protects K-12 education funding, Department of Transportation funding, shared revenue to local municipalities and federal money.

Both the Assembly and Senate bills would delay $125 million in payments to school districts until just after the two-year budget officially ends June 30, 2009, thus moving the expense from one biennium to the next.

Rhoades said some school districts may have to borrow money for a short time if the state does that. But, she said, the Assembly budget proposes covering those finance costs.

Cutting spending and using money set aside for a rainy day such as this are the right choices, agreed Rep. John Murtha, R-Baldwin.

"If we go (to shared revenue cuts), it's just going to come up on the other side," said Murtha.

He said that as a town chairman, he knows if the state cuts revenue to municipalities, they need to increase income some other way.

Instead of the Legislature micro-managing state government, lawmakers should leave it up to the governor and his administration to find the cuts, agreed Rhoades and Murtha.

The budget repair bill adopted by the Democrat-controlled Senate last week digs the budget deficit hole even deeper, complained Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls.

She said the Senate bill includes "job-killing tax increases," new taxes on health care and increased government spending.

The bill, passed on 18-14 party-line vote, would tax the profits of parent companies, instead of the current system of taxing only the profits of their subsidiaries in Wisconsin.

This "combined reporting" change would cost businesses $130.5 million by mid-2009, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

"This is exactly the wrong prescription for Wisconsin's economy and symptomatic of flawed leadership that looks to grow government at every opportunity," said Harsdorf. "With a lagging national economy, it is unfathomable that we would tax health care and job providers more."

The Senate didn't call for a conference committee to work out compromises between its bill and the Assembly bill. Instead Senate and Assembly leaders and the governor's representatives are talking among themselves.

That's a good sign, said Rhoades' Chief of Staff Eric Schutt. He said before the budget was first adopted, a conference committee spent months working on the budget, which wasn't finalized until party leadership took the reins.

"This time the three sides are talking right away to try to find some common ground," said Schutt.

"There's no need to start this fight all over again," said Murtha. This is a budget repair bill, not a whole new budget process, he said.

"If we don't act quickly, bad things can start happening," said Rhoades. "There's no need to go through that."

Contact Judy Wiff at regional@rivertowns.net or 715.426.1049.

By Jason Schulte, RiverTown Staff

School referendums in Ellsworth and Plum City were defeated, highlighting the election results within the county yesterday.

The Ellsworth referendum, which was asking for $950,000 a year, starting in 2008-2009 and ending in 2013-14, was defeated by a 877-595 vote.

Meanwhile, Plum City, who was asking for $350,000 a year, starting next year and ending in 2010-2011 was defeated by a 747-98 vote. In a surprise, both Plum City school board incumbents, Mark Sweeney and Shirley Gilles were defeated. Challenger Kurt Henn led with 587 votes, while write-in candidate Andy Wieser had 578. Gilles had 184 as Sweeney earned 145.

Other local election results of note include Nikki Shonoiki defeating Mike Larson for the District 6 seat on the Pierce County Board. Shonoiki is a 20-year-old student at Wisconsin-River Falls, while Larson had served on the County Board since 2000. Bruce Hartung won the open seat on the Elmwood village board and Jeff Riess was elected to the Elmwood school board.

Statewide elections showed that Burnett County Circuit Judge Michael Gableman defeated incumbent Louis Butler to earn a seat on the State Supreme Court. Gableman became the first challenger to knock an incumbent state Supreme Court justice in more than 40 years.

Voters across the state also overwhelmingly voted to limit the line item veto power of the governor passing the so-called "Frankenstein Veto."

The measure passed with 71 percent of voters supporting the amendment which would prohibit the governor from crossing out words to create whole new sentences in a bill.

For more please read the April 9 print edition of the Pierce County Herald.