While the Republican administration has decided to take a machete to the state services and employee pay, it's not exactly balancing the budgets of local governments. The chaotic austere economic scatter-shot approach is leading to a number of unintended consequences. Like sales tax increases:
BusinessWeek: Faced with mounting costs and potential cuts in state aid, officials in two eastern Wisconsin counties are considering new countywide sales taxes ... officials in both Kewaunee and Sheboygan counties acknowledge the political risks ... But with county budgets being squeezed by Gov. Scott Walker's attempts to reduce government spending, some county officials are willing to consider it.
Mark O'Connell, executive director of the Wisconsin Counties Association, said "They might not have any choice."
Sixty-two out of 72 counties in Wisconsin already collect a half-cent sales tax.
Kewaunee County Administrator Ed Dorner said the deficit is the result of Walker's proposed cuts, employee wage and benefit increases, the rising cost of fuel and other needs, and state-imposed limits on property taxes.
For critics, the answer is no. Karen Kinstetter, a former Kewaunee County Board member, has started a recall effort for board members who support the idea. "They are so far detached from their constituents, it is unbelievable," she said.
Of course, Kinstetter must not have gotten the Gov. Walker memo he recently dictated to the Wisconsin Radio Network:
Walker says in the past lawmakers have faced recall elections after instances of misconduct in office and not over a single vote.
“At some point if you have a recall after every vote, you could have those continuously, one-after-another-after-another and it makes it very hard in a Republic for things to get done.”
But the same rules don’t really apply to the Republican Party. That rule; having it both ways.
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