Taxes

One of Walker’s first acts in 2011, after he turned down the money for trains to Madison but before he “dropped the bomb” on labor unions, when he thought nobody outside the state house was paying attention, is he called a special session of the legislature and pushed through a new bill requiring a supermajority to raise sales taxes. Wisconsin has brutally high property taxes and, compared to most states, ridiculously low sales taxes. This furtive move, along with his huge tax give-aways rewarding the business buddies who supported him in the election, allowed him to claim we were in a budget crisis and he would have to make drastic cuts somewhere. Predicting where he would make those cuts was hardly rocket science. Those of us who had watched funding for libraries, parks, and schools dwindle under Walker’s county administration could have told you where the axe would fall.

The City of Milwaukee’s tax base has been shrinking for years as our schools face more serious challenges. One major reason we are losing revenue is that many of the people who grew up here and graduated from our schools have chosen to purchase homes out of town, especially in the suburbs of Ozaukee, Washington, or Waukesha County. Their property taxes are lower in those communities because of higher incomes and zoning and because suburban municipalities don’t have to provide the costly services Milwaukee does. Many of these people own businesses and employ MPS graduates at lower wages than they might pay their suburban neighbors.

Yet these people come into the city to visit our museums, theaters, music festivals, restaurants, and taverns. They use our county’s parks and beaches and skating rinks. They drive on our roads, use our sewers, and leave their garbage. So do people from Chicago and other areas out of state. And who picks up the tab for the repairing the roads and cleaning up after all these out-of-town visitors? The already over-taxed residents of Milwaukee.

Sales taxes may be more regressive than income taxes, but wisely designed, they could help us recoup some of the costs of providing city services by passing them off to people who are not indigent city residents.