{"id":3928,"date":"2023-06-29T17:07:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T17:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=3928"},"modified":"2023-06-29T18:16:53","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T18:16:53","slug":"wins-on-justice-education-and-taxes-are-only-the-start-of-wisconsinites-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=3928","title":{"rendered":"Wins on justice, education and taxes are only the start of Wisconsinites\u2019 work"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/wisconsin-wins-on-justice-education-and-taxes\/<\/a><\/p>\n

To win the vote is merely to start the work.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Person<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As the Wisconsin Legislature wraps up a biennial budget that has both ups and downs \u2014 it spends much more taxpayer money, but much less than the metastatic demands of Gov. Tony Evers \u2014 Wisconsinites clearly got some wins.<\/p>\n

It is up to Wisconsinites to consolidate and expand those.<\/p>\n

Criminal justice: Help and expectations<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The budget improves pay for prosecutors and public defenders \u2014 a major priority of the Badger Institute. This is necessary: Wisconsin\u2019s pay lagged not only comparable states, as the Badger Institute has shown<\/a>, it lagged the pay for other competing job options<\/a>, leading to growing delays in criminal cases as district attorneys\u2019 offices struggled to keep staff<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This matters. This month, for example, a man who tried killing Milwaukee police was convicted in absentia<\/a>. He didn\u2019t show up for trial<\/a>, since he wasn\u2019t in jail despite his past convictions for armed robbery, cocaine possession and being a felon with a gun. He was out on a no-cash signature bond because of trial delays.<\/p>\n

Milwaukeeans are suffering a little-abated<\/a> crime wave<\/a>, to the point teen car-theft gangs<\/a> feel free to shoot up holiday celebrations<\/a>. It doesn\u2019t help when would-be cop-killers wander off.<\/p>\n

Wisconsinites now have addressed the staffing shortage said to be one cause of such chaos. This is a win. We ought to now expect the justice system to staff up, try criminals, convict the guilty, use incarceration as a deterrent.<\/p>\n

But those next steps require that Wisconsin voters pressure prosecutors and judges into doing their jobs appropriately.<\/p>\n

The school choice beachhead<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Already signed into law<\/a> is increased funding<\/a> for families who choose to take their children\u2019s state school aid to independent schools. The increased school choice funding that the Badger Institute long<\/a> has called for<\/a> helps close the per-pupil funding gap between district public schools and independent charter and private choice schools enough to sustain them as an option for the growing<\/a> number of interested families<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a win for Wisconsin children.<\/p>\n

Now? The program still uses perversely complicated funding<\/a>. It still excludes middle-class families. Voters will need to press lawmakers for more reforms.<\/p>\n

Taxes, small businesses and envy<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The Legislature sensibly gives back to taxpayers at least some of the surplus the state has taken from them: It proposes cutting Wisconsin\u2019s income taxes, including the top rate, one of the highest in the country, and moving at least a little toward a single-rate system<\/a> that taxes all incomes proportionately<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That top rate, unchanged even as lower brackets have been cut, afflicts two-thirds<\/a> of the business income reported by the vast majority of Wisconsin businesses that pay taxes on their owners\u2019 personal returns. So, as the Badger Institute has pointed out<\/a>, such reforms benefit everyone<\/a> in our economy.<\/p>\n

Gov. Evers, however, may still veto relief for those small businesses, and it\u2019s instructive to listen to his rhetoric. He speaks<\/a> of relief as going to the \u201cwealthy,\u201d and more broadly progressives say high-rate taxpayers don\u2019t really need the money \u2014 as if taxpayers\u2019 earnings belonged to the state and any relief were an allowance.<\/p>\n

So even if the tax relief survives, we have work to do. The case must be made, over and over, that income taxes are revenue-raiser and not a kind of vengeance<\/a> against those who earn and save. It must be explained how loading the cost of government disproportionately onto people who can move<\/a> businesses to a lower-cost environment<\/a> is backfiring for our slow-growth state<\/a>. It must be explained how envy is corrosive to society.<\/p>\n

None of this should be discouraging. As is often said<\/a>, there are no lost causes because there are no gained causes. Good citizenship makes ongoing demands.<\/p>\n

The lessons in the Milwaukee bail-out<\/strong><\/h4>\n

And what are those demands? There\u2019s a lesson in the already-signed bill to bail Milwaukee\u2019s governments, city and county, out of their fiscal mess.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That law gives Milwaukee the added local sales taxes city and county leaders long demanded. But the money comes with strings attached, and Milwaukee politicos did not like that<\/a> one bit.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bill says the new 2% sales tax \u2014 said by the city<\/a> to be desperately needed to cover pension obligations \u2014 can\u2019t instead fund expansions of Milwaukee\u2019s superfluous<\/a> fare-free streetcar that costs<\/a> $15 per ride<\/a> to operate. It requires that some police officers be stationed inside Milwaukee public high schools to prevent trouble<\/a> rather than being summoned an average of 7.2 times per day<\/a> after crimes occur \u2014 another Badger Institute priority<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Milwaukee, the law also decrees<\/a>, cannot spend any revenue from the tax on \u201cfunding any position for which the principal duties consist of promoting individuals or groups on the basis of their race, color, ancestry, national origin, or sexual orientation.\u201d When hiring, it can\u2019t discriminate<\/a> on\u00a0those\u00a0 grounds, either.<\/p>\n

This simple ban on racial or sexual discrimination is \u201cone of the biggest attacks on us,\u201d Ald. Marina Dmitrijevic said<\/a> this week, \u201cand is absolutely unfair, unjust and unacceptable.\u201d Much of the council seems to agree.<\/p>\n

Legislators simply added limits against bigotry, waste and disorder that any mic-in-a-parking-lot poll of constituents would reveal as more popular than Taylor Swift tickets. Yet Milwaukee\u2019s Common Council this week was exploring how it could nullify those limits.<\/p>\n

This suggests a string theory: If you grant a government money with strings attached, someone had better be ready to tug on those strings. The first on the list of \u201csomeone\u201d is an engaged citizenry.<\/p>\n

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

The post Wins on justice, education and taxes are only the start of Wisconsinites\u2019 work<\/a> appeared first on Badger Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/wisconsin-wins-on-justice-education-and-taxes\/ To win the vote is merely to start the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-badger-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3928"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3931,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions\/3931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}