Scott Walker

The 2015-17 spends $4.4 billion more overall than the 2013-15 budget did. This is a 6.4% increase. General Purpose Revenue (GPR) spending has increased the last 12 years, as shown by this chart. Property taxes will be frozen once again. What are property taxes used to help? Local school districts, technical college districts, and all local cities, towns, villages, etc. benefit from property taxes. Property tax is the largest source of tax revenue in Wisconsin. Technically, locals should be the ones levying property taxes, but the state has put in many strict limits on how much they can levy. School districts can only raise a certain amount of money from state aid and property taxes. Oh, but wait! Scott Walker put in a state property tax relief measure! This law raised state aid $60 million in 2014-15. But school districts are still under revenue limits. The $60 million in aid triggered a $60 million property tax reduction to taxpayers. “State schools Superintendent Tony Evers pointed out that while the new law ‘provides property tax relief for some school districts, it does not increase spending for public schools. ’” Now that property taxes are frozen once again, schools will not get any more increased funding than previous years. Speaking of schools, let’s talk about the UW system. The state helps fund the UW system, and the more state funding that the school receives, the more the school can lower costs for tuition. In the 1993-94 academic year, nearly 34% of the system’s budget came from tax dollars. In the 2014-2015 year, this percentage has shrunk to 20%. This lack of funding has caused the UW system to raise tuition in order to make up for funding not provided by the state anymore. In 2012-13, 73% of undergraduates had loans at graduation. The average debt was $29,129, compared with $17,250 in 2003-04. Now, the state has frozen the UW tuition cost, which means that the schools can not raise tuition costs on students. YAY! Not so fast. With state funding dropping 13% (Walker argues that it is only 2.5%, but his own workers published the fact that it is 13%), and tuition being frozen, how will the UW system be able to survive? UW-Madison Chancellor, Rebecca Blank, says that this cut will mean layoffs and harm to the school’s mission. I want to address what Walker believes is only “2.5%”. If you do take the $6.1 billion system budget, and take away $150 million per year, that does represent 2.5%. However, the remaining $3.7 billion is not all available to the UW system. Some of it is federal research grants, some of it is for athletic purposes, and there are certain special gifts that have been given that cannot be used by the UW system. If you go to a University book store and buy a keychain, that cash cannot be used to pay the salary of a science professor. Therefore, the system will have to cut professors, which limits the amount of classes that students can take, which could possibly mean students need to stay for more than 4 years of college (because of the lack of classes available), which keeps them in debt longer. It’s a vicious cycle, and Walker’s cuts to the UW system will not help anything. Two days ago, the UW-Rock County announced it will be losing its dean and six or seven other administrative positions by the end of the year. Soon, around 83 full-time positions will be cut. Other UW schools are expecting layoffs as well. The student government at Madison (the Associated Students of Madison--or ASM) is being cut, so students do not have a voice. Walker has also limited the amount of decisions that the school itself can make. Continuing on with education: School Ratings All public schools will be given a five star rating. This is based on standardized testing. Not the quality of teaching, or the “green rating” of the school, or the new types of learning being integrated, but standardized testing. Standardized testing has promoted cheating, and kids with high test anxiety can find standardized testing a nightmare. Just look at the Atlanta cheating scandal! 11 administrators and teachers were convicted for participating in a cheating scandal. There were kids that were worried they weren’t “smart” enough to pass these tests, and under extreme pressure, chose to cheat. And we are using these tests to rate schools? Each child is a different test taker, and these tests cannot assess critical thinking that well. Traffic Projects The state is going to borrow $850 million for road projects. This means delays in major highway projects and resurfacing and reconstruction work. Minimum Wage Walker’s budget has repealed a law giving construction workers (working on public projects) a minimum salary in local governments. Now towns, cities, etc. , can pay construction workers whatever they want for building schools and making changes to other properties. Natural Resources The state will no longer offer tax support to state parks. Because of this, the price to get into these parks has increased. +$3 for annual admission, +$1 for daily admission. Camping fees will increase from $3-$5 per night. People not from Wisconsin will be paying an extra $5-$8 per night. The cost of an annual trail pass will go up $5. This may not seem like a lot, but state parks are often attended by families. If each person is charged the fee, the total price to stay overnight at a park will become quite costly. The budget also cut 17.5 researcher positions from the Department of Natural Resources’ Sciences Services Bureau. This service bureau works on pollution and mining. They will have 12.5 positions left. About 6 non-profit organizations will not get about $1 million in grants after the governor simply took the money out of the budget. Prisons Prison towers will now not be guarded at night, as 60 third-shift tower guard positions have been eliminated across 10 prisons. Those employees will be moved into other vacancies “promised” to them. Now I would like to ask why this is a good idea? For those that say prison breaks in Wisconsin “never happen”, just this past May, three inmates escaped from a prison near New Richmond. The prisoners escaped at 5 a. m. , which happens to be during a third-shift guard position. Eliminating these positions will be deadly. Pipeline Canada-based Enbridge Energy will now be able to finish working on an expansion in Dane County. In July 2010, a pipeline by Enbridge Energy burst and spilled 1,000,000 gallons of diluted bitumen, a heavy, crude oil, into the Kalamazoo river. On March 14, 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered Enbridge to return to dredge portions of the river because there was still submerged oil and contaminated sediment. In May, Mackinac Island found that zebra mussels have corroded Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 pipeline. The pipeline was installed in 1953. No updates have been made since, and the “protective coating” on the pipeline has become outdated, and a new breeding ground for zebra mussels. However, Enbridge Energy has not closed down the pipeline yet, even though it is danger and could have another catastrophic spill. And now, Scott Walker has allowed Enbridge Energy to expand a pipeline into our state where it could spill and ruin lakes and other natural reservoirs. This pipeline will go through Wisconsin with a potential risk for spills along many counties. As you can see, this budget will not and does not help the people of Wisconsin. Sources by "Category"Overall State Budget Spending: . http://www.maciverinstitute.com... Property Tax: . http://www.politifact.com...-/ . http://www.politifact.com... UW Budget . http://www.politifact.com... . http://www.jsonline.com... . http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com... . http://www.gazettextra.com... Star Rating . http://edge.ascd.org... . http://fox11online.com... . http://www.usnews.com... . http://www.washingtonpost.com... Traffic Project, Minimum Wage, Natural Resources . http://www.startribune.com... . http://www.jsonline.com... Prison: . http://www.upi.com... . http://www.weau.com... Pipeline: . http://www.mlive.com... . http://america.aljazeera.com...