No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

“Financing” the local portion of the commuter choo-choo

by @ 23:30 on December 21, 2006. Filed under Choo-choos, Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

The “geniuses” behind the KRM white elephant, er, commuter rail have a real wiener of an idea to finance this albatross: a 0.05% sales tax in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha Counties to provide $8 million per year. Let’s see; assuming their numbers are right (and they’ve been previously blown up), they start the project $157 million in the hole (assuming no additonal fed funding; the 90% fed funding they want would still leave them $23.7 million short) and have to make up $10.9 million per year in the difference between fares and operating costs. Oops; last time I checked, you can’t do that on $8 million/year, and that’s assuming the Craps’ Department of Revenue coughs up all the money due this latest unelected taxing authority (something they have a problem with). Guess those “other funding options” will inevitably creep back into the mix.

What’s worse, they want to give the county boards authority to levy a 0.45% sales tax to “shift” the cost of running the buses off the property tax rolls. Seeing we have 14 tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spend-and-spend-and-taxers on the 19-member Milwaukee County Board, there’s another $45 million or so in tax and spending increases. They will see to it that there is no property tax relief, as there are portraits of Thug Holloway to be made, pensions to be doled out, union Rip Van Winkles to be “employed”, and deputies to have sit on the freeways to generate even more revenue.

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