Madison Notes: We Think More Taxes Are Fine

Our legislators may be balking at new taxes in the midst of a recession, but Madison's local leaders aren't:

• The Madison City Commission supports the Municipal League's effort to get the legislature to let cities impose another penny sales tax (you know, the kind of tax most likely to make it harder for working folks to eat). Evidently Madison thinks a new events center in Sioux Falls is a great reason to raise taxes... even though Madison is keeping prime property for a new Madison events center off the market for another year.
• Again cleverly burying a lead story, the Madison Central School Board got us all focused on its reversal of Vince Schaefer's "retirement," then passed a four-year, one-million-dollar opt-out and referred it to a public vote April 13. See—when Governor Rounds says he's zeroing the increase in education spending, he's not really zeroing the increase; he's just shifting the responsibility and political heat from his office to your local school boards. He knows taxes need to go up; he's just not willing to do it himself.
• No word yet on whether Lake County has found a good reason to support higher taxes, but hey! Now that we have a raving liberal on the Water Quality Committee, we'll probably pass a local income tax to turn the entire county into a riparian buffer zone. Ah, trees....