June 17, 2021 at 5:04 p.m.
Consider the source on county revenues
Consider the source on county revenues
We have reported on this special-interest outfit before, and we'll recap that in a moment, but for now let's take a look at the analysis. Read between the lines - and you don't even have to really do that - and the WCA wants counties to have the ability to impose more local sales taxes, higher property levies, and to invent all sorts of new fees and taxes.
One such invention already has been created, a so-called wheel tax to go on the plate with our real estate taxes, served up with several sides of ever-increasing zoning fees. What will they think of next?
Maybe a tax on cold, fresh air. That would make the county courthouse a permanent tax-free zone but it would hit the rest of us pretty hard most of the year.
Let's take a look at the WCA's logic. Between 2008 and 2019, state aid to counties declined 20 percent, putting the squeeze on county budgets. Not only that, but the state has restricted how counties can replace that aid, slapping levy limits on hard-working public servants, restricting the use of local sales taxes, and allowing few "creative" options, such as a wheel tax.
Oh, woe is me, the WCA cries. As a result of all this, inflation-adjusted county spending fell by 7 percent, which is dire because, you know, counties provide a wide array of critically important services, such as eligibility determinations for FoodShare, Medical Assistance, and childcare programs; child protective services; mental health, alcohol, and drug addiction treatment programs; youth justice programs, including out-of-home services; and long-term support for the elderly and the disabled.
With a straight face, the WCA reports this decline in spending as a given that it's bad, rather than as a reflection of the truth: Voters elected Republicans to reduce spending and the size of government, and all those inconvenient restrictions on high-spending government officials worked right as they were designed to do.
So the WCA's main focus - and what the report tries to justify - is to replace lost state aid by raising taxes by as much as possible at the local level and to make everyone think they need to do so before the sky falls.
But this logic holds only if one presumes that all county spending is critical and necessary. Because if it's not, then maybe the focus should be on cutting unnecessary programs and services and using revenue "enhancement" as a last resort.
Oneida County is a shining example. As we have repeatedly reported, and as everyone knows, Oneida County is always loathe to cut any government program, no matter how frivolous. So loathe that they have taken in recent years to recklessly spending one-time dollars in the bank - which don't just replenish themselves by magic - for year-to-year ongoing expenses, a major accounting no-no.
This is a county that would rather rob its fiscal future to keep the UW-Extension, an outmoded relic of the past. Give the Extension $200,000 a year thereabouts and take $250,000 from the general fund, that's the shell game they play.
And on it goes. Maybe the county's new finance director will lead the county board out of the wilderness, assuming she hasn't wandered into it herself, but in the meantime it's not too much of a stretch to say the county has been willing to make do with crummy roads to keep master gardeners gardening over in Rhinelander.
OK, that is a stretch, but it's still an apt metaphor for what is going on overall in the county.
The truth is, Oneida County does provide critical services in public health, social services, highways, law enforcement, and those other programs the WCA mentioned. Those are core services - so long as social services resists Alan VanRaalte's bid to be a social justice warrior general - and they absolutely need to be fully funded.
The thing is, they can be fully funded without new taxes if the county narrows its mission to carry out core services and core services only, and lets the rest of the deadwood go. Once that is done, raise taxes for the core services if you have to, but only if you have to.
Pretty simple.
Now about the WCA. Here's the dirty little secret. It's a political scam. A total political scam that does not have the taxpayers' interests at heart.
Here's how it works. We citizens elect our representatives to the county board. Their job is to enforce state policy - counties are the administrative arm of the state - but, where local flexibility can and should occur, our representatives are supposed to seek out that flexibility.
They are our lobbyists for true local control - let local governments innovate and govern as they like so long as they don't conflict with state law or constitutional rights.
They do some of that, but over the years they have done something else. They have banded together and formed such special-interest groups as the WCA, the Wisconsin Towns Association (WTA), and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities (LWM), which they fund through annual dues paid by - wait for it - our tax dollars.
These organizations then go and lobby the state, only not for us but for the dues-paying officials and bureaucrats they exist to protect. In other words, they lobby for the interests of the collective bureaucracy, the institution of government, not for individual taxpayers, and those interests are not always compatible.
The WCA's slogan is telling: "Protecting the Interests of County Government since 1935." Not the interests of the people, mind you, but the interests of government.
For example, in 2018 the League of Wisconsin Municipalities (LWM) launched an effort to get local governments to pitch in financially in a campaign to advocate for higher taxes on many businesses by supporting so-called "dark store" legislation. The state's chamber of commerce, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, denounced what it called a taxpayer-funded effort to raise taxpayers' taxes.
"It is laughable that taxpayer funds could be used to promote higher taxes, however that is exactly what the League of Wisconsin Municipalities is trying to do," said Scott Manley, WMC senior vice president of government relations.
In 2019-20. the WCA's legislative agenda included, among other things, support for increased financing for the controversial - wait for it again - UW Extension program; for statewide legislation prohibiting the enactment of local ordinances restricting the residency of sex offenders; for hiring additional assistant district attorneys; for modifying the current annual levy limit adjustment so counties could raise property taxes; and for an exemption from levy limits for economic development efforts, essentially a bid to allow government to pick economic winners and losers and raise taxes while doing so.
Virtually every item on the WCA's legislative agenda for 2019-20 involved more spending by government. Undoubtedly some of those measures are good things, but how do the people of our county feel about those priorities? Why should they be spending tax dollars to lobby for items they may well oppose?
That's why our locally elected representatives should be our de facto lobbyists. They speak for us, and if they cease to do so, we will not re-elect them. The point is, a county's position on those issues should be hashed out through our elected representatives in public at the local level. Instead, the WCA takes our tax dollars and lobbies for its own special-interest positions on those issues, conveniently the positions that require more spending, more revenues, more taxes.
They needed this report to justify all that, though, and that was likely paid for with our tax dollars, too. Unfortunately, believing anything the WCA may say about county taxes and spending would be like believing the Democratic Party's year-long narratives on the Pulse nightclub shooting, or on the removal of protesters from Lafayette Park so Trump could have a photo op, or on the idea that anyone who believed the Covid-19 virus may have leaked from a Wuhan lab was simply a crazy right-wing nut.
It you still believe those media and liberal narratives, the WCA has just the thing for you, and, no doubt come budget time, some liberal Oneida County supervisors will tout this new report to make their case to preserve unnecessary spending and increase it - and taxes and fees - if they can.
Indeed, for most county board members, all the WCA has to do is scream, "Jump," and the supervisors will ask 'How high' in mid-air. After all, the WCA has been protecting "the interests" of county government since 1935.
Why spoil a good spoils system now?
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