Property taxes rise in the face of a budget deficit

Steven Walters reports in "Limiting property tax will be no easy feet" that homeowners are paying a larger share of the levy at 71%:

Capitol leaders promise to control property taxes next year, after homeowners and other property owners opened bills this month that, in total, rose by 2.8% to a record $8.6 billion.

Wisconsin's 1.5 million homeowners will pay about 71% of that levy - a percentage that keeps rising. In 1990, for example, homeowners paid 60% of all property taxes.

Doyle said the property tax bill mailed in December on a median-value home assessed at $171,840 will be $2,843, or about the same as last year. Of that total, $1,475 - or more than half - will pay for public schools, and $783 will go to run the local city, village or town.

Reedsburg faces some difficult budgeting challenges

Ken Leiviska reports in District will leave no stone unturned that Reedsburg is facing some tough challenges for the second year in a row due to declining enrollment, budget cuts, and a referendum:

The school district has already made some tough decisions in an attempt to balance a budget for the 2008-09 school year. Despite cutting three custodial positions, saving $150,000; cutting building maintenance, $175,000; postponing curriculum adoption, $150,000; cutting a part-time clerical position, $2,675; changing the long-term sub pay; and cutting six extracurricular programs, the school district ultimately passed a budget with a deficit of $65,027. The district overspent its budget by $595,117 during the 2007-08 school year.



Because the three-year rolling average for student enrollment is in a period of decline; the district is in the second year operating without referendum money; and because the district is in jeopardy of losing one of the major grants it holds — the Wisconsin Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) — there are many tough decisions ahead.

The Wisconsin Way and tax reform

Steven Elbow reports in Group calls for tax overhaul in new report that the Wisconsin Way is interested in:

Moving school funding away from property taxes, shortening high school time from four to three years, eliminating the corporate income tax. These are a handful of the many ideas an influential group of business and lobbying leaders in the state are hoping to spur a discussion about long-term solutions to Wisconsin's economic woes.



The group's long-anticipated "Blueprint for Change" is the result of 14 months of public forums and meetings across the state to address policy shortcomings that it says has resulted in a tax system that doesn't work and a brain drain of workers with college degrees. The result is an erosion of earning power and quality jobs, according to the group.

Spending increases do not mean increased tax bills for Madison

Dean Mosiman and Matt DeFour report in Madison property tax bills reflect rate drop of 1.1 percent that:

Despite city and school spending increases, many Madison taxpayers aren't having a sticker shock compared to other municipalities when opening tax bills.



Madison's equalized tax rate dropped 1.1 percent for 2008 while the average of cities, villages and towns in Dane County showed slight increases between 0 and 1 percent, new county tax information shows.



Change in equalized tax rates ranged from a 10.69 percent increase in the town of Deerfield to a 9.76 percent decrease in the town of Blue Mounds. Equalized means all properties are assessed at fair market value.

Revenue limits stay, QEO goes

Richard Moore reports in Doyle: Keep school revenue limits, repeal salary caps, that Governor Doyle wants to kep the revenue limits in place while getting rid of the QEO:

"I do not intend to take the revenue limits off of schools, so I think like any public employees - there are revenue limits on cities, and firefighters and police go to the bargaining table without any QEO and they have to operate within what those limits are. I don't see why teachers should be treated any different."

Will the Democrats eliminate the QEO?

Jason Stein discusses teacher pay caps and the QEO in With Democrats in charge, teacher pay cap could bite the dust:

The QEO law allows school districts to avoid potentially costly arbitration on union contracts as long as they offer teachers a yearly wage and benefit increase of 3.8 percent or more.

Since the law took effect in 1993, the average increase in teachers' salary-and-benefit packages has hovered around 4 percent a year, compared to more than 7 percent in the years immediately preceeding the change.

But the law also bars districts from unilaterally reducing benefits, meaning health insurance costs can eat up much of the allowable increase.

With the current budget deficit and Democrats in charge, it is likely that school funding will be revisited very soon.

"By getting rid of the QEO we'll finally see in Wisconsin a variety of different compensation packages emerge from what we've been locked into for (15) years — depressed teacher salaries, rising benefit costs and nobody very happy with where we're at," Doyle said.

Supporters of the OEO said repealing it would make it impossible for schools to survive under state-imposed revenue caps and would threaten the state's more than decade old system for paying for schools.

Might this be the end of revenue limits altogether?

As Wisconsin's deficit grows, how will the state keep pace with its two-thirds funding committment?

In State deficit forecast rises to $5.4 billion by mid 2011, Steven Walters discusses Governor Doyle's plans to shore up the budget and protect school funding:

Doyle said he wants to avoid raising the sales tax or income taxes. He said his top priorities would be protecting aid for public schools - now about $5.1 billion a year - and for local governments. State aid to local governments helps control property taxes, he said.

"I am going to do everything I possibly can to protect schools," Doyle said. "That doesn't mean they'll get everything they want."

But keeping state government's promise to continue paying about 66% of public school costs will cost an additional $480 million in the next two years, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Democrats in the Wisconsin Legislature call for change

In "Dems look at changing school funding", Shawn Johnson discusses the future of school funding in Wisconsin now that the Democratic party control the state government:

Doyle says he wants to preserve funding for public schools for which the state pays almost two-thirds of their costs.

Actually, the state pays a little over half of public school costs, rather than the "two-thirds" promised when the revenue limits were passed in 1993, which is why districts keep going to referendum and asking local citizens for more money. The state hasn't quite kept up with its end of the bargain.

Johnson writes:

Educators have long said Madison needs to something, because the state’s 15-year-old revenue limits have forced good programs and teachers to fall by the wayside.

The state’s largest teachers’ union says it wants the government limits on school tax revenues and teacher pay and benefit increases.

Residents from the Northwoods plea to reps to fix the formula

In "To Our Representatives in the Northwoods: Fix the Formula", Linda Goldsworthy questions the fairness of the current funding formula:

School District Number of Students State Aid per Student
Dover #1 117 $4,677
Phelps 162 $1,000
Brighton #1 175 $6,510
Washburn 604 $6,798
Three Lakes 609 $ 943
Bruce 613 $6,659
Platteville 1,425 $6,486
Northland Pines 1,439 $1,028
Maple 1,445 $5,558
Shawano 2,889 $6,494
Rhinelander 2,951 $4,332
Elkhorn Area 2,961 $5,114

Why is a student in Three Lakes worth only $943 of state aid while a student in Washburn, with five fewer students, is worth $6,798? In fact, according to the 2006-07 numbers, the 74 students at the all-male Norris High School in Mukwonago received $14,535 per student in state aid while the 91 students at Geneva J4 were worth a mere $193. Fix the formula.

Pension plan woes directly impact cities across Wisconsin

From Pension Plan Woes Could Cost Cities:

The stock market's recent decline and its effect on public employee pension plans may directly impact services available in municipalities such as Eau Claire, Rebecca Noland, the city's finance director, said Friday.

Noland said there is talk that the Wisconsin Retirement System may be considering a 0.5 percent rate increase for employers in 2010.

"That 0.5 percent increase would cost the city's general fund about $115,000 per year and about $150,000 for all city funds, general fund included," Noland said. "We are restricted by levy limits in the amount the city may raise taxes, so we will most likely have to further reduce services in 2010 in order to cover the rate increase."