9
February
2006
February
2006
Will Scott Walker boost taxes for freeway expansion?
County Executive Scott Walker, who loves to take credit for helping kill gas tax indexing, is still pushing for the humongous, multi-billion dollar freeway expansion plan. Isn’t it time he explained which taxes he would raise and how much he would raise them to pay for it?
Gretchen Schuldt
Gretchen Schuldt, Walker Watch
Don’t forget, Walker voted for gas tax indexing while in the Assembly.
He may be opposed to it now but before he gets to pose for holy pictures he needs to come clean.
Or Doyle could just not raid a half a Billion dollars out of the transpo budget next time… wait will Doyle still be the governor for the next budget?
Speaking of raid, Doyle actually increased the amount that Walker got for mass transit this year.
What did Walker do? He cut services and raised fares and used Doyle’s money to fill other holes in his budget.
Unfortunately, Doyle did not increase state aid for transit even enough to keep up with inflation. Transit aid statewide went up $3 million in the last budget, or about 10% of the money set aside just for the studies of I-94 North South reconstruction. Doyle’s support of transit thus far has been more lip service than reality — how else can you interpret a 2% one-year increase for transit and a 22% one-year increase in funding for major highways? And that 22% increase starts from a much, much larger base than the 2% increase for transit does.
The downward spiral has accelerate in the Walker and Doyle administrations much faster than in the Ament-Thompson years. This is due partly to mayor John Norquist’s effective lobbying of state aide and gas tax investment for transit.
Meanwhile, the city of Milwaukee just approved three big development deals involving about $60 million altogether to build parking garages. City Zoning and Development Committee Aldermen Mike D’Amato, Bob Bauman, Ashanti Hamiliton, Mike Murphy and Willie Wade all expressed displeasure and want the city to shift priorities to the connector study.
We’ve got Manpower moving downtown, Abbot Labs talking about moving to Pleasant Prairie in Kenosha, the Metra running commuter lines up to the city from Kenosha, and a connector study that we’ve got to actualize in the city — a clear vision of the Milwaukee of the future is emerging, with the movement of people to and from jobs up and down a mass transit based corridor. We need a leader to express this vision.
Gov. Doyle? Mayor Barrett? The time is now.
Clarifying - That would be Norquist mass transit lobbying in the 1990’s during the Ament-Thompson years. The 2003-04 transition of city leadership from Norquist to Pratt to Barrett left a void in city lobbying efforts in Madison for a while. Walker has not picked up Norquist’s slack in lobbying for mass transit.
The Thompson - McCallum - Doyle transition also hurt continuity in mass transit priorities. Truth is, in Wisconsin, we’ve had more success of late dealing with the Chicago Transit Authority and Metra than with our own state, where Waukesha to the west has refused to share in regional transit planning.
Our focus needs to be south, where we’ll find our partnerships in the booming economic corridor that runs north of Chicago up to Kenosha. The Doyle and Barrett vision has to encompass future airport policy (sorry Jeff Plale - you’re being counterproductive on this).