November 12, 2020 at 11:16 a.m.
Feeling like a million dollars
Feeling like a million dollars
We can just see the buoyant bureaucrats now: Happy people, dancing and whistling and singing, "Boy, I feel like a million dollars!"
They should, because the Oneida County board of supervisors has just green-lighted a spring referendum that would, if passed, raise our property taxes by, well, a million dollars a year.
It's not quite a done deal, but it might as well be because not one supervisor opposed it this week on the county board floor. So expect the bureaucrats' hands to be out when April ballots arrive, only they won't be looking to shake your hand so much as just to shake you down, period.
Now there is a caveat about this referendum, and it is that the money is for road construction, and the county highways are clearly not in the best of shape. That is a fact.
Whether you look at the age of the roads, and the high number of miles that are past 20 years old or approaching that marker, or whether you judge things just by driving about, that our roads need more money is a reality. A few miles are almost unsafe now, as supervisor Jack Sorensen pointed out this week.
Now there are questions about just why the county let the roads fall this far behind, though we know the sharp escalation in reconstruction costs combined with levy limits played a role. But what is undeniable is that we need to spend about a million dollars a year more on roads than we have been, and, one way or another, taxpayers are going to pay that bill.
If voters defeat the referendum that allows taxes to be raised, supervisors will simply collect it through the back door by bonding for it. Then we'll pay the million dollars a year more, plus interest.
Of course, there is one way to avoid a net tax increase, even while paying the million for roads. Put simply, the county could finally, at long last, start to cut unnecessary spending. Non-mandated programs and programs that government shouldn't be funding in the first place should be eliminated. Cutting spending in non-core areas to pay for needed spending in core areas only makes sense.
To his credit, supervisor Scott Holewinski has been preaching this very sermon now for years, and he did so again at last week's county board meeting. And, as it has in the past, his sermon fell on some very deaf ears.
For starters, Holewinski tried to save $150,000 - that's 15 percent of that proposed tax hike - by cutting the UW Extension's budget. Holewinski's failed motion would have reduced the Extension's budget from $196,000 to about $42,000, salvaging the two programs that need to be saved, 4H and Teen Court.
Holewinski's argument is a powerful one. Over the past decade the county has conducted two efficiency studies to determine how it could cut spending - two studies supervisors have steadfastly ignored - and in both of them the UW Extension ranked near the bottom.
There's a reason for that. Most of the services they provide are duplicative of those already performed in other departments, or that should be. That those departments haven't asked for such programs long ago tells you they don't think they are needed.
And the UW Extension has programs, such as the master gardener program, that are certainly nice but should not be funded by taxpayers, especially in tight times.
So, if any program should be cut, it's the UW Extension, and the fact that supervisors won't touch it tells you all you need to know about them: They don't ever intend to cut spending, they do intend to keep on raising our taxes any way they can.
The UW Extension is not a lone island of wasteful spending, either. In the coming weeks, we intend to examine all county spending, county programs, and those efficiency studies to expose exactly what the county is spending our dollars on.
Suffice it to say for now, the county could have easily cut a million dollars and way more over the past few years if it had wanted to. The county board did not do so.
Instead, they will be coming to us for a tax increase for a core function of government that is critical to public safety because they didn't have the courage to say no to bureaucrats.
And make no mistake about it, every bureaucrat will be singing and dancing over this referendum, not just those in the highway department. That's because, by asking taxpayers to pay for something the county should have prioritized years ago, all bureaucrats will be able to continue to protect their warrens of needless spending without any accountability.
Think about it. Having to go to referendum because the county got way behind on road reconstruction means that for years now the county has valued such things as the master gardener program over the general public's safety.
In their minds, the UW Extension - and other programs such as land and water conservation - have been and are more important than our roads.
For years, before levy limits took effect, as Mr. Holewinski also points out, the county got away with building an absurdly huge excess fund balance by overtaxing wildly. By Mr. Holewinski's calculations, the tax levy rose by an astounding 13.44 percent a year between 1998 and 2002.
So the county could spend with abandon and spend with abandon it did. Supervisors built the Taj Mahal, otherwise known as the new county jail, and then kept $2 million a year in debt payments on the tax roll after the jail debt was paid.
The law enforcement center itself has become something of a sinkhole for county tax dollars, and taxpayers are saved only by the good fortune of having state inmates housed there. Even today, living in much tighter fiscal times, we have only barely escaped having spend-happy supervisors build a gleaming new $10-million-plus highway department, as supervisors obsessed with having governnment palaces keep bringing it back.
The bottom line is, in recent years supervisors have been in a luxurious spot. Because so many years of overtaxing allowed the county to build up a huge general fund, the county has never had to make a decision between taxing and spending. The excess allowed them to meet levy limits, generally avoid borrowing, and still get away with preserving unnecessary spending.
That is no longer the case. As long predicted, something had to give. Either unnecessary spending has to be cut or taxes have to be raised, either through outright increases in referenda or by borrowing, which is a tax on future generations.
This week a majority of supervisors told us which way the board intends to go. They intend to keep on spending at all costs, and to pay for it by asking us for ever more.
This year, many supervisors are betting that voters will say yes to higher taxes because it will be for roads and everybody wants good roads. They will present it as a necessary evil, and as the lesser of two evils, the other being to borrow for those roads.
But don't be fooled. What they won't say is that it is a false choice. What they won't own up to is their own excessive spending of the past and their desire to keep up that excessive spending. What they won't tell you is that the real choice is not between taxing and borrowing, it is between taxing and spending.
Voters should be prepared not merely to reject such an arrogant proposition as they will face in the spring, but demand that, instead of borrowing for the core functions of government - always an absurd practice but one that supervisors will be prepared to do if the referendum fails -supervisors should pay for those core functions by eliminating non-mandated, non-core, and unnecessary services and programs.
When we make them do so, or boot them out, it will be taxpayers who will feel like a million dollars.
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