Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
Doyle's "Oil Company" Assessment May Change...
Governor Doyle has given an indication that he is open to discussing an alternative to the Oil Company Assessment that you and me recognize as simply another reach into our pockets. So far as taxes are concerned, we are at the bottom of the food chain and that has gotten to be an increasingly expensive place.
Doyle, of course, has postured that he has found a way to assure that "big oil" will be forced to help keep Wisconsin's roads in a state of good repair. This has already been defeated in courts elsewhere. He is the person, if you'll recall, who has engineered the raiding of our road building funds on at least two occasions when he was looking about for more money to satisfy his spending drive.
A long list of interested parties has sent a letter to the Democrat and Republican heads of both the senate and the assembly. The rumor mill suggests that the Governor is willing to listen to alternatives. Those alternatives would include increasing the gas tax by another $.03 per gallon, increasing the vehicle title fee by $25 from $53 to $78, adding an electric and plug-in hybrid annual registration fee of $50 per vehicle and assumes a vehicle inspection fee savings that would be used in the transportation fund.
This is all well and good. It still means that us taxpayers and fee payers will be carrying the load. That isn't going to change no matter what our governor tells us. What is also being proposed is language that would keep the money in the transportation fund so that it will not be available for anything else.
In other words, the Governor's transportation piggy bank would go away. He'd no longer be able to pull money from that fund for whatever use he decides it would better serve.
It is a shame that this would have to be proposed, but it should've been in place years ago. We are forced to assume that we can't trust our politicians to use the money we've given them for the use to which they told us it would be put.
Our governor seems particularly untrustworthy in this regard.
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