Last night the Wisconsin State Assembly passed AB-40, the State’s biennial budget bill.
Other than the overall increases in spending over the last biennial budget, the hike in taxes for many homeowners and senior citizens in the budget’s slashed Homestead Tax Credit provision, the pork (money for one politician’s pet project - the WI Aerospace Authority for a “Sheboygan space station” ), the tax loopholes for big corporations which will allow them to unfairly compete with other main street Wisconsin businesses, the slash and burn of education which has a devastating effect on western Wisconsin school districts, especially rural schools, the non fiscal policy items stuck in like proclaiming “Ronald Reagan Day” in Wisconsin and allowing bail bondsman to operate in our state against the wishes of many judges and prosecutors, and the here-we-go-again fund raids, at least rich folks in Racine and Milwaukee Counties will now get to send their kids to private schools on the tax payers dime with the budget’s expansion of the school voucher program, inserted just for them.
My philosophy has always been that only when legislators from rural, urban, and suburban districts, and from both parties, get together and work for the overall good of all of Wisconsin, will we be able to get away from lopsided budgets like the one passed last night.
My constituents asked me not to support a budget that included non-fiscal policy items and pork and therefore I registered my vote against the budget.
In a bright spot, my colleague State Rep. Keith Ripp, a good man from the other side of the aisle, approached me after my budget amendment was voted down by the majority party, which would have given school district’s flexibility, student’s choices and Wisconsin businesses’ skilled workers, by allowing schools to offer vocational degrees such as welding or CNA degrees in lieu of traditional high school degrees, and offered to work with me in a bi-partisan way to pass my idea as a stand-alone bill. I will remain positive and people across Wisconsin should applaud Keith.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|