Any resident who owns a cell phone, landline phone or any other device capable of calling 911 will now have to pay a 75-cent monthly fee.
The new phone tax, which went into effect Sept. 1, was created in the biennium budget by Gov. Jim Doyle in June. There was a previous five-year phone tax put into practice in 2003, which was implemented to upgrade and improve 911 centers, but that tax only applied to cell phones.
The revenue collected from the phone tax will go into the state’s shared revenue fund in order to support local fire and law enforcement agencies, according to Doyle’s spokesperson Lee Sensenbrenner.
“This tax prevents a shared revenue fund cut from hurting police and fire departments,” Sensenbrenner said. “It helps keep our neighborhoods safe.”
Sensenbrenner added since public safety is very important to Doyle, as well as the people of Wisconsin, maintaining funding for these agencies is crucial.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance, said in a statement the phone tax was a necessary evil considering the financial condition of the state.
“In this budget, we had to make the largest spending cut in state history to deal with a $6.6 billion deficit,” Pocan said. “During the worst national economic crisis since the Great Depression, we fought hard to maintain our commitment to public safety, as well as education, health care and economic growth.”
Kimber Liedl, spokesperson for Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said the state had $20.3 million in surplus revenue from the 2003 phone tax. Instead of crediting the money back to customers on their bills, however, she said the excess money was put into the state’s general fund.
“There was a surplus and an opportunity to credit it back to people on their bill, but the governor decided to spend it,” Liedl said.
According to Liedl, there is no new money going to local governments. She said Doyle and the Democrats raided a lot of money, which was supposed to go to local governments, and supplanted it with other revenue streams.
