| SEARCH OnWEAC |
|---|
By Governor Jim Doyle
There is growing tension in Wisconsin between property taxpayers and the education system.
Instead of communities uniting to build and fund the best schools for their children and grandchildren, education has become a divisive issue, too frequently pitting families with young kids against those struggling to afford higher property taxes.
In my budget, I wanted to help resolve this tension by including a property tax freeze. But unlike the Republican freeze two years ago - which simply amounted to massive cuts in education - my property tax freeze is responsible.
Right now, schools are allowed by law to have a modest increase in their spending - less than three percent a year - that covers everything from the rising costs of employee salaries to increasing heating costs to new textbooks. My plan picked up all the increased costs of schools for the next two years so that property taxpayers could have their taxes frozen, but schools wouldn't have to cut their programs.
This was also the right thing to do because in the previous budget, an historic $3.2 billion budget deficit caused the state to have to cut back its share of education spending. This time around, I made deep cuts elsewhere in the budget so that we could make education the priority, providing an additional $850 million in state support for our schools. That investment fulfills the state's obligation to pay two-thirds of the cost of each child's education and allows for a responsible property tax freeze.
But unfortunately, Republicans approached this budget with a whole different set of priorities.
Instead of making education the first priority - as I did in my budget - Republicans left it for last. And by the time they got around to education, they had given away so much to special interests that there wasn't anything left to adequately fund our schools. The result is that to achieve their property tax freeze, they want schools to cut the amount they can spend educating our kids by more than $350 million.
On top of that cut, Republicans also cut more than $50 million in support for smaller classes, school transportation, four-year-old kindergarten, and school breakfast programs. All told, it represents the largest education cut in decades.
Their proposal to cut state support for education would force school districts to choose between a massive property tax increase or laying off thousands of teachers, raising class sizes, and cutting programs from music to athletics. Just yesterday, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards released a study which shows the Republican budget proposal would mean layoffs for more than 4,700 teachers.
If schools had to cut starting in September, they would have to pay millions of dollars in unemployment compensation to lay off teachers that have already been hired - taking even more money out of the classroom and away from our kids' education.
Republicans know full well that schools can't sustain these kinds of cuts, and the only real option for most communities would be to raise property taxes. The fact is, this Republican budget is a cruel hoax on the taxpayers of this state - forcing them to choose between higher taxes and drastic cuts to education. That's a false and unfair choice - one that could be avoided if the state meets its commitment to help pay for local schools as I proposed in my budget.
Republicans say there isn't enough money to invest in education. But that's only because they weren't willing to stand up to the special interests, and make education the priority.
Anyone could have seen this coming. Week after week, Republicans were canceling their public budget meetings, and instead would meet with special interest groups in private. Then, last week, they held one marathon meeting in the middle of the night, spending millions of taxpayer dollars on giveaways to special interests - and then passing huge education cuts.
The Republican budget is a case study in missed opportunities and misplaced priorities. In their budget, special interests win while kids and taxpayers lose.
There is no better example of this special interest budgeting than the budget for transportation.
My budget included a robust transportation program - more than $4.2 billion of roadbuilding over the next two years. But not even that would satisfy Republicans, who put more than $200 million more into the Transportation Fund that could have been used for schools and real property tax relief.
Not only that, Republicans added more than $40 million in pork barrel projects earmarked exclusively for their own districts. It is a clear sign that Republicans are far more interested in scoring political points than they are in being fiscally responsible or supporting education.
Our kids should be our first priority - they shouldn't be the ones on the chopping block, and the budget shouldn't be balanced at their expense. I will do everything in my power to see that we have a final state budget that fully funds education and freezes property taxes. Those are pretty simple priorities, and I hope the full Legislature reverses course so we can work together to meet them.
Resource page on the 2005-07 state budget
Posted June 15, 2005