We already know that County Executive Scott Walker has no intention of actually balancing the books in Milwaukee County but he’s recently said he doesn’t even support a referrendum letting Milwaukee County voters weigh in on the issue. Although the County Board passed a resolution sending the question to referrendum, Walker has pledged to veto it.

Woopdedo.

‘ug, taxes bad, me good’ is the unofficial motto of Walker and company.

In this same not-so-cerebral vein, watch for Walker to wait until next week to announce his veto. If he was only interested in policy issues he would have gave the resolution his veto on Friday. Walker is such a media whore that the only way I can see him vetoing the resolution this weekend would be while on stage at the State Republican convention. But since the GOP wants the spotlight to be on their boy Mark Green, Walker will hold off until next week.

But really, this whole sales tax referrendum issue has been overblown. In yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel the metro section headline was “County sales tax vote advances”; not “County sales tax referrendum advances” or “Voters may decide on Sales tax”. No, this misleading headline almost looked more like we could have an increased sales tax. This misleading hype played right into Walker’s hand and look for the JS to give him a headline similar to “Walker vetoes sales tax” instead of a more honest headline like “Walker vetoes referrendum on sales tax”.
Governing through referrendum is bad practice but in recent years it has become a partisan attack tool to motivate the GOP base to get out the vote. The gay bashing referrendum and the pro-murder referrendums that will be on the ballot this fall are little more than polls to motivate angry shallow people to get out and vote. There’s nothing that will motivate evangelicals to run out to the polls than an opportunity to bash gays. (Because we all know the bible says that no one should be both happy AND gay, right?)

That being said, the State has given local government the ability to raise taxes above the state mandated cap if it is approved by referrendum. This means that it is unlikely that a sales tax could be raised by local government anyway. Even if it were to be raised, the pattern of the state over the past few decades would be to skim an unreasonably high percentage off for administrative processing. With that in mind, it’s tough to find fault with a Walker veto from a policy perspective — it’s the political grandstanding that is the most troubling.