I missed the budget meeting and the subsequent Common Council meeting here in Oak Creek where they passed a tax-and-spend-to-the-max 3.86% levy increase/4.1% expenditure increase budget the other week. However, thanks to Mark Verhalen, I do have one of the reasons why they did that rather than the original 3.03% levy increase and 3.0% expenditure increase; they wanted to grab $250,000 in additional state shared revenue for the 2009 budget under a program supposedly for communities that practice fiscal restraint available only to those local governments that did tax and spend to the max.
Yes, you heard that right – the state is passing out state tax money to communities that screw the taxpayers the maximum amount allowed so that they can continue to spend out of control when the one-year semi-freeze limit hits.
Words, at least those not involving BS-bombs, H-bombs and F-bombs, fail me.
Yeah Steve, the Expenditure Restraint Program (ERP) doesn’t work for a variety of reasons, one of which you’ve identified. Another is that it awards a city if spending increases by no more than inflation +60% of new growth – in the General Fund. So cities create a million other funds – e.g., Sanitation, Parks, that kind of thing. All kinds of ways to get the money. Grrrr.