Opinion ID: 1841181
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Lake Districts and Certiorari Review

Text: ถ 104. This court is extremely sensitive to its obligation to afford substantial deference to any exercise of legislative power. When a lake district performs its legislative functions, it is entitled to this deference, and courts should be reluctant to invalidate its legislative decisions. Nonetheless, there must be a clear-eyed analysis of the predicament inherent in the exercise of legislative power by lake districts. ถ 105. As a general rule, all property in Wisconsin is situated within a city, village, town, or Indian reservation, and is either taxable or tax exempt. All property within a lake district is also situated within a city, village, or town, and is subject to whatever taxes the pertinent municipality may impose. When property is included within a lake district, it is subject to an additional level of taxation: that is, it is subject to a tax on top of the tax imposed by the county, the city, village, or town, the vocational-technical district, and the school district. There must be some discernible reason why any property is required to pay an additional layer of taxes. ถ 106. In theory, a town sanitary district is also an additional layer of government. However, cities and villages have clear statutory authority to handle sanitary issues while towns do not. As a result, towns create sanitary districts so that certain functions can be performed that cannot be performed by the towns themselves. In this sense, sanitary districts are not an additional layer of government. ถ 107. Lake districts are truly an additional layer of government, and they are created by people driven by a laudable but special interest. Special interest petitioners devise the boundaries of a lake district to serve this interest and they submit their plan to a county board for approval. The county board may carefully evaluate every parcel of property to determine whether it should be included in the district. As a practical matter, this is not likely to happen. Such a review would require a conscientious board to fine-tune the proposal submitted by the petitioners and collectively draw up its own plan. This is especially unlikely to happen with respect to property located in a different county. ถ 108. Thus, because the legislature has failed to establish clear standards for what property may be included in a district, a lake district may be a gerry-mandered creation that is ultimately turned over to the people who drew the lines. Property owners disgruntled by their inclusion in the district may not have means to influence the elected county board officials who approve the creation, or the ability to punish at the ballot box either the board or the lake district commissioners who administer their own creation. In this regard, creation of a lake district has fewer checks than creation of a town sanitary district. ถ 109. If courts are unable to provide any meaningful protection to property owners, the creation and governance of lake districts will lend themselves to serious abuse. The limitations of certiorari review do not provide much protection. Consequently, we urge the legislature to reexamine the statutes on lake districts to provide reasonable standards for legislative decisions, whether by a county board creating a district or by a lake district board in governing a district.