The state's Joint Finance Committee, over the objections of some Democrats, voted 9-6 Wednesday to spare local governments from the $1 billion dollar cut in shared revenue this year, reductions that Gov. Scott McCallum proposed in his Budget Reform Act.
The proposal, which will now go to the state Assembly, reduces shared revenue payments by $750 million in 2003. The payments then would remain at $515 million from there on out.
McCallum took a page from his predecessor's playbook when he proposed a task force to study the relationship between state and local government in his State of the State address Tuesday.
\I am committed to working with town boards, county executives, village presidents and mayors across Wisconsin to develop long-term solutions,"" he said. ""The goal of this commission will be to build a better Wisconsin through state and local partnerships.""
According to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, the Governor's Task Force on State and Local Government is unnecessarily redundant of former Gov. Tommy Thompson's Blue Ribbon Commission on State and Local Partnerships for the 21st Century. Thompson's panel is more commonly referred to as the Kettl Commission, after its chairman, UW-Madison political science Professor Don Kettl.
""We don't need another study, that's just putting off the problem,"" Falk said.
Despite the overlapping nature of the two commissions, Kettl said he felt it was appropriate for the governor to broach the subject once again.
""His view is that this is an effort to try to build on the work my commission had done,"" he said. ""The proof will always be in the pudding, but I think that there is a lot of work to be done and the time is ripe for trying to find ways of pulling this all together.""
Madison Mayor Sue Bauman said she hopes more action will result from this task force than the last.
""The Kettl Commission only went so far, it made a variety of recommendations that didn't go anywhere,"" she said. ""A new commission could take what was in the Kettl Commission report and ... flush them out and perhaps develop the tools that would definitely be needed to get from where we are now to a [more regional government].\
