Right wing silent on Walker tax hike

I have been remiss in not mentioning Milwaukee County Exec Scott Walker's call for a tax increase to pay for operating and maintaining the county's parks.

After several years of tax "freezes" and insistence that increasing revenue was not the answer, Walker has decided it is OK for taxpayers to pay more to preserve the park system, one of the county's jewels.

There's a catch, of course.

Walker wants a new park district to be created, and for that district's board to be able to raise taxes 3% a year.

As long as the county runs the parks itself, Walker won't spend an extra nickel. He'd rather watch the parks fall into disrepair and the pools into disuse.

But when he sees a way to spend more without having to take responsibility, Walker thinks that's OK.

The current parks levy is $18.4 billion. Once this levy is handed over to the new Parks District, the parks levy would allowed to rise by 3% in 2007. Assuming the levy goes up by 3% per year, after 10 years the levy would be about $6.3 million higher, or $24.7 million. That's a 34% increase over 2006.

I don't have a problem with that.

But I wouldn't have a problem with the county property tax levy going up 3% a year, either.

Scott Walker sees a difference where there is none.

And his right-wing friends, who heap praise on him for freezing county taxes, don't say a word about his willingness to spend millions more now.

Why? Because they are as phony as he is.

If a Democrat -- Tom Barrett, Jim Doyle, or whoever -- had made this same proposal, Republican radio would be all over it, adding up the millions to be extracted from taxpayers and predicting a mass exodus from Milwaukee County.

When Walker does it, the silence on talk radio is deafening.