Thompson puts it together

LIKE "The Little Engine That Could," Gov. Tommy Thompson has defied the doubters and come up with a $1 billion property-tax- relief plan that looks generally workable and equitable.

The plan has its pitfalls, including its reliance on uninterrupted economic growth. But the governor deserves credit for his imagination and tough-mindedness in meeting two elusive goals:

For the first time in decades, overburdened homeowners will actually see their school taxes go down, and the state will come much closer to honoring its constitutional obligation for equal educational opportunity. That is no small achievement.

Under legislation approved last year, the state must raise its share of public school funding from about half to two-thirds by 1996-'97. That requires coming up with $1 billion more in state aid. Thompson's solution combines expected revenue growth with cuts in state spending, bureaucratic streamlining, removal of a few sales-tax exemptions and a wide array of fee increases.

That's not quite the no-new-taxes approach he had pledged; fees are taxes of a sort, and state income taxes will go up slightly because of a reduction in the renter/homeowner tax credit. Moreover, some of Thompson's streamlining is dubious. (We'll have more to say about that in future editorials.)

The bottom line, though, is that December 1996 tax bills for homeowners should drop an average of $302.

The other major advance is a more equitable -- End of 1st Leg -- school-funding formula that begins to close the unconscionable gap between rich and poor school districts. The current disparity in per-pupil spending ranging from $10,739 in the richest district (Nicolet) to $4,340 in the poorest (Mishicot) mocks the state constitutional requirement that schools be "as nearly uniform as practicable" and invites litigation. Worse, it makes children the pawns of geography and economic circumstance.

Thompson's budget wisely targets more money to the 30 needier districts, paying up to 90% of the first $1,000 of costs per student. Regrettably, even the richest districts, some of them now ineligible for most state aid, would also get help. That's hard to justify, but it's politically understandable: It will make the governor's plan more palatable to suburban legislators.

Here's the iffy part of Thompson's budget: More than a third ($380 million) of the $1 billion plan is dependent on one-time savings and money borrowed from the next budget. Where will the money come from in 1997? What if the economy takes a downturn? Or if federal funding to the states is drastically curtailed? Could those cuts, and Thompson's own, prove too painful to be sustained?

Thompson and his budget wizards pooh-pooh such concerns and speak confidently about future savings from high-tech automation schemes. Let's hope those rosy scenarios hold up. Otherwise, what's gained in this biennium may be lost in the years ahead. And the dreaded T-word may yet creep back onto the radar screen. . . .

Copyright 1995
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.