A penny saved is a dollar owed

Some people were having a lot of fun today with this exchange over the sewerage district's budget, and an amendment to raise taxes 4% instead of 2%, as reported by the Journal Sentinel:

"This amendment saves $2.5 million over six years," Dale Richards, a commissioner from Oak Creek who supported the plan, said Monday.

Another commissioner, Rep. Pedro Colón (D-Milwaukee), didn't buy that logic.

"Only in government would someone argue that raising taxes saves money," Colón said after the meeting.

Great sound bite.

But anyone who's even taken out a loan or a mortgage, or waited a year or two to buy something, understands that paying now is almost always cheaper than paying later.

That brings to mind the Milwaukee County budget, where County Exec Scott Walker, in the name of a tax "freeze," has put off paying $27-million into the pension fund this year.

That makes it look like taxes aren't going up, but there's a big catch. That little maneuver will cost county taxpayers an additional $69-million over the next 30 years, and "has the effect of passing debt on to future taxpayers," a study found.

Phony freezes are not free. They are very expensive.