Alliance of Cities 2001-2002 Issues

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This is the proactive agenda for the coming legislative session adopted by Alliance of Cities member city leaders at a meeting Sept. 15 in Ashland. The agenda:

Provides inflationary adjustments to state shared revenue to all communities while the state-local partnership is being retooled.
Requires payments in lieu of taxes from the owners of property the Legislature has designated as tax exempt, and provide a clearer, more equitable definition of "benevolent."
Forbids counties from levying a property tax for services they do not provide to every municipality within their borders, and create incentives for functional consolidation of local services irrespective of local political boundaries.
Creates incentives for a regional, watershed-based, solution to the stormwater management mandate.
Provides adequate non-property-tax funding for recycling programs.
Increases brownfields grants and eliminate existing disincentives for turning old industrial land into housing or open space.
Exempts local governments and school systems from paying the state gasoline tax. One level of government simply has no business taxing another level of government, a fact the federal gas tax has long recognized.

We've prepared a position paper and a resolution on each of these issues, and we welcome municipalities from outside the Alliance of Cities to study our position and consider and pass resolutions on these issues as well. Both are available by clicking on the underlined text to the right of the title. The resolutions can be cut, pasted and edited.

Here they are:

Funding Services to Citizens Resolution Position Paper

Provide for inflationary increases in shared revenues based on the following: run the formula, provide an inflationary increase in aids equally across the board to each municipality and add the additional aid to the base for the following year.

Tax Exemptions Resolution Position Paper

Require payments in lieu of taxes for local services provided to owners of tax-exempt property. Provide a clearer, more equitable definition of "benevolent" and create a moratorium on all new exemptions until 2010, when all tax exemptions will sunset unless reauthorized by the legislature.

Fairer Taxation Resolution Position Paper

Forbid counties from levying a property tax for services that are not provided to every municipality within their jurisdiction. Create incentives for functional consolidation of municipal services regardless of boundaries.

Stormwater Management Resolution Position Paper

Create incentives for a regional solution to the stormwater mandate, including a provision to allow NR 216 permitholders to enforce standards on communities that have been designated as contributing municipalities.

Recycling Resolution Position Paper

Provide adequate non-property-tax funding for the program, as approved by the Legislature in the 1999-2001 budget: Appropriate at least $37.8 million annually for recycling grants by imposing a modified business surcharge on certain businesses and a tipping fee that differentiates between high-volume industrial waste and other solid waste. Exempt tipping fee costs from expenditure limits for municipalities.

Brownfields Resolution Position Paper

Eliminate the disincentives in brownfield grant programs for redeveloping brownfields for residential or retail use, providing the project is consistent with the municipality’s land use plan. Provide adequate funds for the program.

State Gas Tax Resolution Position Paper

Exempt local governments and school districts from paying the state gas tax.

. If you don't have the names and addresses of your legislators handy, they're available at

http://www.legis.state.wi.us/waml/

Also, please add relevant local information to any of the resolutions — mention of brownfields sites crying for redevelopment, tax incremental financing success stories that the TIF Working Group's actions would disallow if they were proposed under the working group's recommendations, etc. — to add more punch to the resolutions locally. They're essentially the starting point for our lobbying effort for the 2001-2003 leigslative session, so they need to have as much local relevance as you can put into them. And as part of our local lobbying strategy, please send us copies of what you pass.