Anne Blackbourn wrote a succinct article regarding the challenges of shared revenue Nov. 3. Below I would like to add some additional thoughts on the matter.
Over the past 20 years, the state has abandoned policies begun in the 1970s that shared state income and sales tax revenues with cities, towns and villages. These policies helped communities invest in their local economies while limiting the growth in local property taxes. More recently, the state began a series of major reductions to shared revenue payments to cities, towns and villages, while facing a triple threat of endemic budget deficits, poorly executed tax cuts and a national recession. This culminated in 2011 with Act 10, which barred constructive labor-management relations, slashed aid to cities, towns and villages, and substituted local control over economic investments with strict state-mandated limits on local services in support of economic growth and vitality. These new limits rely on an allowable growth factor — the ratio of the value of new construction to overall property values — that has almost no relationship to service demands and cost inflation, rather than having some relationship to costs, such as the consumer price index or service demands, such as population.
Paul Soglin ([email protected]) is the mayor of Madison.
