Standing Up For Local Control

I enjoyed presenting at the South Milwaukee Education Association’s state budget forum on Tuesday, and I want to thank the more than 80 folks who turned out (and the organizers who invited me).

It was an informative discussion and debate that I hope was a learning experience for attendees. It certainly was for me, thanks to the dialog throughout the night.

My message? It’s the same one I’d deliver to any crowd, liberal or conservative: Municipalities share many of the challenges school districts do. We feel the same pain when it comes to spending what it takes to deliver the services taxpayers expect and deserve.

State mandates make this more difficult than ever. Simply, I hate being told what to do, and it needs to stop.

This was the focus of my remark Tuesday.

The state has enough problems of its own than to inject itself into what should be local issues like how much we can raise in property taxes or where our city workers can live or what we can and can’t negotiate with our public employee unions. Indeed, those three examples — levy limits, residency restrictions and Act 10 — are mandates that impact what we do as a city every day. There are others.

All taxpayers feel this to some degree.

Consider levy limits.

The state limits how much communities can raise in property taxes in a given year, essentially capping levy increases at the amount of new local construction. And in an already-developed city like South Milwaukee, that has been around 1 or 2 percent, or less, in most years – barely inflation, if that. In other words, for a city that runs as efficiently as ours, doing more with less already, the state has made it difficult to fund even the same level of services year over year.

Costs go up … but how can you factor those in when your budgets can barely grow?

So we continue to do our best, making do thanks to the hard work of our city employees, from the administration to the front lines, dealing with the day-to-day ramifications of legislation authored and decided by politicians 90 miles away.

Am I arguing to raise taxes? Of course not. I’m proud of the low-levy-increase budgets the City Council has passed in recent years, and we need to continue that focus on frugality.

My point, instead, is this: No matter where you stand on any of these mandates – and I actually favor some of the more recent ones, including relaxed residency and Milwaukee County Board reforms — these should be local issues, decided by local leaders.

I hope we can all agree on that.

There seemed to be strong agreement on Tuesday night, when I left attendees with a request to get involved.

How? Contact your legislators, and the member of the Joint Finance Committee, as they hammer out the 2013-15 budget details. Let them know where you stand on key issues in the state budget – issues like public education funding and the state mandates that have their biggest impacts on the local level.

Become part of the debate at the local level, too. Attend a city council meeting or three. Learn the issues. Vote. Post something on NOW. Even comment on this blog. Stay on top of the key issues facing our city … and make your voices heard.