The tax terrorists have won

At least they've won the battle for the hearts and minds of the Journal Sentinel newsroom, or Managing Editor George Stanley. How else do you explain that this story rated the TOP LINE HEADLINE, two inches high, in today's Milwaukee paper?:

MATC seeks 5%

increase in tax levy

Request is latest to outpace inflation;

rising costs, lower state aid blamed

By TOM HELD

A budget endorsed Tuesday by the Milwaukee Area Technical College Board would increase the school's tax levy 5% in the coming fiscal year, outpacing inflation and contradicting the growing anti-tax sentiment in the state.

After breathing a sigh of relief that the Legislature had failed to pass constitutional tax and spending limits earlier this month, the board backed a budget that would increase spending about 6.3%, based on current projections.

The $309 million MATC has budgeted for 2006-'07 represents a 32.4% increase from its spending at the start of the decade and tops the rate of inflation for that period by roughly 14 percentage points.

Since the 2000-'01 budget year, the college has raised its tax levy 42%, from $93.2 million to the $132.6 million in local taxpayer dollars being sought to support the school in the pending budget.

I'm not going to argue that this budget can't be cut, or that every dollar is absolutely needed. I've worked in government enough to know that's not true.

But the newspaper's treatment of this would make you think it was a 50% increase, not 5%.

Maybe that's double the inflation rate. But I suspect some of the things in that budget -- like energy and health care, for starters -- are going up a bit more than the inflation rate, and considerably more than 5%.

There is no doubt this is politically stupid, especially for an unelected board that's already under fire. And President Darnell Cole did a terrible job of explaining where the additional money would go -- salaries and benefits, Milwaukee Public Television, offsetting a cut in state aid. None of those sounds very compelling.

I'm sure Republican radio has had a field day today with this issue.

And I'm sure they will try to organize a lynch mob for the public hearing on this budget, which has not yet been passed.

The newspaper has made it all very easy for them. The story does everything it can to incite the mob. And to what end? That's what's hard to figure. Can't wait to see what the JS editorial board has to say.

Have we really reached the point in southeastern Wisconsin where a proposed 5% budget increase is treated like a declaration of war on the taxpayers? Has the anti-tax movement so terrorized public officials that there is not even room to discuss expanding a program or raising more revenue? It appears that's the case. If it is, the short-sighted, short-term fixes put in place now will cost all of us dearly in the future -- and not just in money.