Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele must be getting some terrible news in his internal polls, because the Boston billionaire’s son is now resorting to some pretty dubious, desperate tactics in his bid to win re-election.
Most egregious is his nonstop TV ad attacking his opponent, state Sen. Chris Larson, of supporting a wild “tax plan” that would harm Milwaukee County residents.
And just what is Larson’s tax plan?
It’s the same plan that 52% of Milwaukee County voters supported in a 2008 advisory referendum.
Somehow, Abele is trying to smear Larson for supporting what the majority wants—and what the county desperately needs—which is a dedicated funding source for the county’s parks, transit and other assets and services so that they can be taken off of the county’s property tax rolls. If you want to seriously lower property taxes, you need to take entire line items paid for with property taxes completely off the property tax bill. If you simply cut them back they will slowly rise again.
Abele, on the other hand, has done nothing in five years to find dedicated funding for the parks or transit, preferring to follow his political mentor Scott Walker’s strategy of doing nothing and taking credit for others’ efforts to expand transit routes, for example.
That’s not all. Larson is asking TV stations to pull the ad since it’s full of what his campaign says are “fake, made-up quotes” allegedly coming out of his mouth.
Abele Is in the Minority on Tax Plan
Let’s take a closer look at this “tax plan.”
During the Walker era, transit, the parks and other county services were starved for resources and deferred maintenance in the parks system alone topped $200 million.
To address this problem, a group of Milwaukee leaders—including then-Milwaukee County Supervisor Chris Larson—developed a plan to create a dedicated source of funding for these services. Their solution was to increase the county-wide sales tax by 1 cent, which would go toward parks, transit, emergency services and cultural assets. In exchange, these services would be completely taken off of the property tax rolls.
The 1-cent sales tax increase was estimated to generate $130 million annually. About half of that money would go toward current operations and the remainder would be used for deferred maintenance and investments in these assets.
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The Milwaukee leaders chose the 1-cent sales tax increase for a number of reasons. For example, like our current sales tax, it would exempt necessities such as groceries. In addition, about 30% of it would be paid by those who live outside of Milwaukee County, which would provide relief for Milwaukeeans who currently foot the bill for amenities—our museums, the Bucks arena and our parks—so both visitors and residents pay their fair share.
Chris Larson was among the leaders who developed the plan, which was placed on the November 2008 ballot as an advisory referendum over Scott Walker’s objections.
And the majority of Milwaukee voters—52% of them—agreed with Larson’s tax plan. Unfortunately, state lawmakers had to sign off on the referendum to put it into effect, and they failed to do so.
Since then, Abele as county executive has followed Walker’s playbook and has done nothing to find a dedicated source of funding for parks, transit and other services that would significantly lower our property taxes. Even after hearing the concerns about deferred maintenance in the parks, Abele vetoed the five-year capital plan carefully crafted by Parks Director Sue Black and fired her shortly thereafter with no explanation, either publicly or privately.
Earlier this year, Abele shut down all three of the Mitchell Park Domes because of safety concerns and said he is open to demolishing these beloved landmarks. Perhaps the Domes would be open and thriving if Abele had done something—anything—to address the maintenance needs in the county’s parks system. But he didn’t, and now Milwaukee County’s assets are falling apart.
And now, in the final days of his campaign for re-election, Abele is bashing Larson for simply agreeing with the majority of Milwaukeeans who said they want to address the county’s funding problems in a sane, sensible way.
So as you watch Abele’s incessant, desperate attack ads until April 5, remember: When Chris Abele attacks Chris Larson over his “tax plan,” he’s really attacking the majority of Milwaukee County voters.
