Thursday, December 12, 2013

It's Still Not Working For The Third Straight Year

Last year about this time, I did a comparison of how Scott Walkers tax cuts for property owners was working out by seeing how much of a tax break I got.  As one might have guessed, the results weren't pretty:

Taxing Jurisdiction
2011 - % tax change
2012 - %tax change
State
4.4%
-0.6%
County
9%
1.5%
Town
1.1%
2.8%
School District
-0.9%
4.5%
Tech School
5.1%
9.2%
Net property tax
4.5%
3.5%


In the fall of this year, just days after Mary Burke announced that she was running for governor, Walker came out with a $100 million tax break pledge.  But even that turned out not to be as good a deal as he was trying to pretend it was.

Today, I received our 2013 property tax statement.

Again, for the third year in a row, it shows that the Walker agenda is not working:

Taxing authority
2011 -  % tax change
2012 - % tax change
2013 - % tax change
2010 to 2013
% tax change
State
4.4%
- 0.6%
2.5%
6.4%
County
9%
1.5%
4.7%
15.9%
Town
1.1%
2.5%
- 0.7%
2.1%
School District
-.0.9%
4.5%
6.2%
10.0%
Tech School
5.1%
9.2%
2.7%
12.2%
Net property tax
4.5%
3.5%
3.4%
11.8%

As the gentle reader can see, all the taxes, except for the town, went up again.   I also included an extra column to show the percentage increase for the three years that Walker has been in office.

And as I mentioned last year, thanks to Act 10, as well as the zeal of his fellow austerity acolyte, Chris Abele (the Mitt Romney of Milwaukee County), I have taken about a 12% cut in pay.

But it's not the higher taxes that bothers me.  I understand that there are no magic pixies that spread their dust around that plows the snow, fights fires, preserves public safety, teaches our children or provide any of the other necessary services that too many of us take for granted.

What I find most egregious is that even though our taxes are going up and our pay is going down, we are getting less jobs and what jobs we have pay less and too many of them are poverty level wages.  I also find it egregious that we are getting polluted drinking water, crumbling infrastructure, less public safety and less rights.  And that doesn't even go into the level of corruption, including an inept governor that had a legal defense fund and two John Doe investigations.

No, no matter how much Walker and the right wing propagandists might try to claim otherwise, it's not working.

Never has and never will.

5 comments:

  1. Good stats. Ours aren't quite as bad but were up 4.8% last year and 1.9% this year. There is also a very large school operating referendum looming that will put it over 5% next year.
    Has anyone anywhere seen there property taxes go down? Anyone? Buehler?

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  2. Just checked Governor Walker's home in Wauwatosa.
    His taxes have gone up from $7,049 in 2011 to $7,301 in 2012 to $8,380 in 2013. That is an increase of 3.6% in 2012 and a whopping 14.7% in 2013. How can he possibly keep saying that he has lowered property taxes since he took office? STOP IT!! They are higher!!

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  3. Six John Does, not two: the one concluded with six convicted criminals and the five currently in action in Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Iowa and Milwaukee Counties.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Two Does. The second spans those counties, but it's all part of the same investigation.

      Delete
    2. The current John Doe is in fact five distinct John Doe cases, see them listed in the attempt to stop them before the 4th District Court of Appeals.

      You're right that it's the same investigation, but there are five Doe cases in the air right now.

      Delete