Milwaukee Rising

While Gov. Doyle commits to spend billions to widen freeways that don’t need widening, city streets are falling apart. The situation is dire and aldermen are getting desperate to come up with some way of making things better or at least slow the descent into much, much worse.

Ald. Jim Bohl came up with an idea that will increase funding for street repairs by, in a roundabout way, increasing property tax rates for non-city units of government like the county, school district, Milwaukee Area Technical College and Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.

Bohl wants to use TIF district funds to pay for street repairs. TIFs are an economic development tool that allows municipalities to borrow to make improvements in an area, then use the new property tax revenue generated through the improvements and subsequent private development to pay off the loan. The borrowing municipality — in this case, Milwaukee — gets to use all of the new property tax money to pay down the loan instead of distributing the revenue to other taxing units as is customary.

Bohl’s idea — received warmly by several other aldermen — is to increase project costs within some or all of the city’s 48 TIF districts and use the extra money to fund street repairs outside of the districts, but within a half-mile of their borders, something state law allows. The city gets to keep the money generated by the TIF a little longer to pay off whatever the street work costs.

The other taxing units still need to collect the full amount of their levies and other property taxpayers simply will have to come up with more money to make up for the amount the city is withholding — they will, in short, be taxed at a higher rate because of the city’s keeping the TIF funds to pay for street repairs.

Yes, the streets really, really need fixing and Bohl is at least making an effort to get the damned streets fixed. Unless I’m really missing something, though, Bohl’s plan essentially would force other units of governments to put the cost of the street projects on their tax levies. This does not seem like a development likely to foster goodwill and cameraderie amongst all those starving local units of governments who can barely cover their own expenses.

Road-builders pouring concrete and money on the ground all over the state are having a good chuckle, though. No starvation worries for them. They’re eating well at the state trough.