It's kind of fun watching the Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature fight over who has the better TABOR/TPA proposal these days. The really unfortunate part is that if they're not careful, someone is going to get hurt, most likely public employees, the whipping boy of the State Legislature. We are encouraged that two of them, state Sens. Sheila Harsdorf and Ron Brown have sort of come to their senses and said, whoa, maybe we shouldn't put this bad legislation into the state constitution. That being said, it's still bad legislation no matter what way it's put into effect--but at least it's easier to get rid of if it's not in the state constitution.
Our opinion is that TABOR/TPA in the form of a constitutional amendment is a cop-out by the elected officials in the State Legislature. They were put there to do a job and part of that job is to reconcile the state budget every couple of years. If they don't wanna do it any more, they can be replaced by new people who want to.
If you out there in blog-land want to help fight this, call your state Senator and Assembly person ASAP and register your opinion on TABOR/TPA. It's going to be coming up for a vote in the next week or so. Oshkosh's state Sen. Carol Roessler has been an apparent fence-sitter for a couple of years on TABOR. Either that or she just doesn't want to share her opinion with her constituents. It's time to push her off that fence so that at least we know which way she's going to vote. I think she owes us that much. I mean, how long does it take to read this stuff and understand what a mistake it would be to lead us down the potholed road Colorado is now on?
One more rant--if the legislators of Wisconsin are so concerned about how much tax money is being spent every year, why don't they vote to stop the per diems they can claim just for going to work every day? I don't get the chance at $44 or $88 extra dollars every day just for showing up at work. It wouldn't be much money that would be restored to the state budget if they gave them up, but sometimes it's the symbolism that's important. That and rewrite the legislation restoring tax fairness to the state of Wisconsin so that the tax burden is not increasingly put upon individual/family taxpayers. Corporations should pay their fair share and not be able to get around it with all the loopholes in the tax laws that are out there.
You can find your state legislator's email/phone numbers here:
www.legis.state.wi.us/
--LC1
