Throughout most of Wisconsin’s history, residents have depended on counties, cities, villages, and towns to deliver important services. We trusted locally elected representatives to make good decisions on our behalf. This system worked very well to meet public safety, transportation, and many other needs as long as those leaders had access to dependable revenue sources.

 Massive cuts to what had become known as shared revenues were made in 2010 and 2011 by Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature. When coupled with tight state-imposed limits on other sources of revenue and annual inflation, local governments simply could not provide needed services to residents.  

In addition to slowly starving local governments of needed revenue, Republicans also replaced local control with legislative rule. Spending and policy making decisions were transferred from local government to Madison. Tax revenue originating in counties and communities was seized by the state legislature.

Republican legislators understand that they have created a serious problem for local units of government. They know revenues are much higher than they were in 2010, and the state has a huge surplus. Why won’t they simply restore funding to local units of government?  Because they see a chance to turn their past failures into more bad policy. 

A bill passed by Assembly Republicans would link increased local funding to several policy changes. Advisory referendums would be banned, perhaps because Republicans have little interest in the opinions of a majority of voters on important issues. There would also be significant limits on how the increased funding could be spent by locally elected representatives.

Governor Evers has proposed increasing aid to local governments with no strings attached.  He understands the importance of allowing local governments access to enough revenue to fund public safety and other programs.  He also knows that local residents and their elected leaders understand best which programs are needed and how they should operate.  It is time that Republicans in the Legislature learned that important lesson.  Republicans once were strong believers in local control.  It is a very good time for them to once again allow local governments to operate freely.