When Milwaukee County won approval for a 1/2 cent sales tax, it was done with a promise — that the funds would be used for capital improvement projects. A few years later, County Executive Scott Walker petitioned the state to allow him to use the funds for whatever he felt they should be used for and that promise was broken.

But it wasn’t Walker who promised fiscal restraint and it wasn’t Walker who promised to only use the sales tax for infrastructure. Therefore, he didn’t feel compelled to adhere to the promise.

I’m hardly an apologist for Walker and you won’t see me showing up at any fundraising events for Lil’ Scooter, but the fact is that he pulled one over on the public and he got ya good.

Yep, you’ve been punked.

You can’t say we didn’t warn you but now there’s more important things to consider, like the proposal to increase the sales tax again.

Whatever the promise that comes along with it, the terms of that promise can change — just look at what happened with the 1/2 cent. Maybe next time it won’t be Walker who is snatching away the revenues for a full cent addition to the sales tax. Regardless of who it is, the additional funds could be siphoned off just as easily as these were.

But Walker didn’t work alone. Let’s just be honest and spread the blame out where it belongs — with the State Legislature and with Governor Jim Doyle. Now the legislature is a place you would expect to butter up to Walker. After all, many of his partisan pals in the Republican controlled legislature thought their golden boy may have been the next governor and they would want him to be able to reduce taxes in the County he runs before an election (even if it was just done with borrowed funds), but why would Doyle not pull out his veto pen? Why would he have given Walker an easy way out? We don’t know.

One thing is definate — the promise to use an additional sales tax for cultural or quality of life spending could easily be changed just like the last promise for a 1/2 cent sales tax for infrastructure and capital improvements was changed to allow Walker to use those funds at his discretion.

In short, it’s just bad policy. This doesn’t even begin to touch upon the problems that the sales tax in and of itself is a regressive tax and snatches away a disproportionately higher percentage of income from the poor than does the income tax — a tax Counties don’t even have the ability to levy.

If anything, before we give more money to the County who has been resistant to raising the one tax it does have control over, we should eliminate counties all together. Duties of the counties could be divided between cities/towns and the state. Many European countries haven’t had counties for hundreds of years and they’re doing just fine. But if you’re going to keep counties, reduce the politics and power plays that go on by eliminating the position of County Exec. Most of Wisconsin’s 72 counties don’t have one so why are they necessary? Even Milwaukee County’s neighbor to the north, Ozaukee County just has a County Board and a hired County Administrator.

Counties first came into play when towns and cities were weak and communication was poor. Now we’ve got telephones, cell phones, pagers and fax machines. The borders of counties were drawn so that any County Supervisor could make it to the County Board meetings with just a one day ride by horse. With paved roads and the superhighways we have now in Wisconsin, one could easily make it from Kenosha to Superior in less than a day. So why do we need counties again?

This is not to say that there is not a current role for counties. If they are going to be part of our political landscape in Wisconsin they should be run and funded appropriately. Removing the County Exec position is just the beginning to de-politicizing Counties. As now-generations of County officials have been saying for years, it’s time to eliminate state madates and for the state to take over the court system.

But let’s not pretend that the bandaid approach to governing (via more sales tax) is going to solve an overly politicized fiscal crisis. The financial wounds that Milwaukee County has suffered from 4 years of Scott Walker are deeper than anything a once cent sales tax Band-Aid will fix. The answers we as the public have a right to know about the fiscal health of Wisconsin’s most populous county may not be known until they put together their budget for this year, and possibly the year after.

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By the way, if we had an Air America affiliate in Milwaukee with a host who was educated on how our local governments run here, the public would be better informed.