Don’t take taxing authority from technical colleges

Members of The Star News editorial board include Publisher Carol O’Leary, General Manager Kris O’Leary and News Editor Brian Wilson.

In a power grab disguised as property tax relief, members of the Wisconsin State Legislature are making a push to remove technical colleges from local property tax bills.

Instead of local taxpayers being responsible for helping to fund the technical college in their region, the revenue would come from state sources including the sales and income taxes. On the surface this seems like a good deal for property taxpayers in the state who would potentially see their final tax bill drop by the tens of dollars.

In reality, because the size of the technical college districts are so massive — Northcentral Technical College taxing district is larger in area than the state of Vermont — the impact on any individual homeowner will be negligible as a total of their overall tax payments.

What it will do is fundamentally shift the ability to influence decision making at the technical colleges from their local regions to Madison.

Currently, technical colleges are funded through a mix of state aid, student tuition and fees, and local property tax revenue. According to the people who run the technical college system, the local operating levy is integral to the relationships between technical colleges, local businesses and the communities they serve.

“We believe there is a great benefit to keeping our technical colleges locally accountable and responsible to the stakeholders of west central Wisconsin as allowed through the current funding structure and oppose the AB 2,” said Sunem Beaton-Garcia, president of CVTC. “The impact and success of this localized approach have been proven over many years, with 86 percent of CVTC graduates employed in Wisconsin and nearly 70 percent within the CVTC district.”

Rather than building on these long-established relationships, AB2, the legislation to take taxing authority away from the technical colleges, would instead put the system in the less than capable hands of Madison politicians. Just as has been seen recently with political threats to continued funding in the University of Wisconsin system, the legislature would use the technical colleges as political punching bags. Decisions would be made to score points with potential large donors rather than being reflective of the needs of the communities that are being served.

In addition to being a bad idea, the process by which AB2 is advancing is fundamentally flawed. It came out of the committee this week with no opportunity for the public to provide input through the traditional hearing process. The bill is being fast-tracked and is on line to be approved through the piecemeal process that has become the norm in this budget cycle.

While in the past all the spending and revenue bills were rolled into the state budget, this cycle is seeing them advanced as individual bills to circumvent the governor’s ability to tweak the budget through the line-item veto.

Voters should always be wary when legislators are moving too quickly and too quietly to pass legislation. Rather than rushing to approve AB2, legislators from this area should be asking the question of why the state government is attempting to fix something that isn’t broken.