What a great Brewers game to be at last night. The highlight was Ryan Braun’s double that turned into an inside the park home run and broke the game open. My “I’m good luck for the Brewers” streak continues. Celebrating a birthday today is none other than my very own wife and love of my life, Jenny. Happy Birthday!
- Mark Neumann announces he’ll be running as a Republican for Governor of Wisconsin today. The timing is smart as he preempts Scott Walker’s quarterly fundraising numbers. Neumann is clearly setting the table to position Walker as a “lifelong politician” with no private business experience. It will be interesting to see how that message resonates with Republicans.
- Idiots vandalize the Milwaukee County Parks system yet again. This time it’s Brown Deer golf course just weeks before the U.S. Bank Championship comes to Milwaukee. The folks at the Park Department have done a heck of a job to scramble and get the course in shape by next week. You can help by donating to The Park People for golf course repairs and to replant the trees that had to be removed parkpeoplemke.org or 414-273-7275.
- First it’s County Board Chairman Lee Holloway threatening to kill funding for the KRM as retaliation against Gov. Doyle vetoing a dedicated sales tax for Milwaukee County Transit, now the State Legislature is doing the same. Can we put the adults back in charge please? Seriously. On one hand, yes I’m just as upset as Rep. Grigsby and Rep. Colon about what the Governor did, but there’s got to be a more productive way to go about this. Successful cities or States aren’t the ones who spend their time in a circular firing squad.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
Wow, the sales tax being cut out was all done by Democrats. Then Holloway threatening to cut KRM, another Democrat.
As a conservative, while I did not support the tax increase, but once it was passed by voters of Milwaukee, it should have gone through. This is another nanny state issue. We at the State level know better than you, at the local level. That’s where the outrage should be.
If I remember correctly, in a referendum whose wording put misleading emphasis on property tax relief and did not explain to voters that the sales tax would gouge the citizens for much more money than the relief being offered, the voters said that they would be O.K. with a sales tax increase IF property taxes are decreased. Here’s how the Democrats would have used this referendum. They would have raised the sales taxes and lowered property taxes for a year or two and then raise property taxes back up to record levels without lowering the sales tax back down to previous levels. Be happy that the sales tax referendum ruse was vetoed by Doyle so that he could get his headline in the state newspapers
There wasn’t anything misleading about the question of the referendum. Taking parks, transit, and EMS off the property tax levy would have lowered property taxes in Milwaukee County period.
It’s a moot point now, but the shift would have lowered property taxes by $170 on a home valued at $150,000 and $250 on a home valued at $225,000.
I know it’s a popular pastime of opponents to speculate as to what would have happened, but those are the facts.
Dan,
It most certainly was misleading. When you phrase a question in the fashion that referendum did, with no guarantees that there will be any long lasting or binding property tax relief, you mislead the voter, period. The question should have been phrased properly, such as: “Shall the State of Wisconsin grant Milwaukee County the authority to increase the county sales and use tax one percent (1%) to remove the following three items from the property tax levy: parks recreation culture, transit and emergency medical services (EMS), along with providing property tax relief of at least sixty-seven million dollars ($67 million)?”
You are right regarding it being a moot point, but to keep telling people that the referendum wasn’t misleading AND that they would have seen property tax relief is not entirely accurate. Less than 20 years ago, people were saying the same thing “but the shift would have lowered property taxes by $170 on a home valued at $150,000 and $250 on a home valued at $225,000.”, and you know what? Property taxes went UP, and there was no effort by the State of Wisconsin or County of Milwaukee to ensure that the increase in sales tax offset my property taxes. Wanna know something else? This increase will/would be NO different.
Another popular pastime is to say “let me increase this tax to reduce this tax”, but then after a year or two renege on that promise – hence my distrust of government.