Boots and Sabers 99.9% Correct

Owen Robinson posted: Republicans Push For New Taxing Entity,

A few Republicans are circulating this very bad bill in Madison. This is enabling legislation that would allow any county in the state of Wisconsin to adopt by resolution or by referendum a local park district.

Key to his analysis is this:

The only thing that creating a separate district does is save elected municipal officials from making the hard choices.

and this:

Is it a good idea?

In general, I oppose the whole concept.  Managing parks, police, fire departments, road maintenance, and all of the other traditional functions of municipal governments should be subject to prioritization.  The notion that we should segment off certain functions to wall them off the demands of other functions is not a good idea. 

Let me just add my two cents. In this day and age we need fewer units of government, not more.

I do not concur with Owen's gratuitous slap at Democrats and call to the Republican 'no tax' mantra, but he is absolutely correct on this one. If you need more resources then raise taxes. Owen might say "no" to that.

But we agree that the philosophical underpinnings of our democracy and pluralistic society are found in sharing resources.

Comments

[Sam Brownback]

Hey Paul - this is actually about your poll over there, not this post.

Dagnabbit, I'm a Republican!!

Conservatively yours,

Sam Brownback (R-Nutjob)

[Paul]

Yeah, but it makes it more interesting. Now that Vilsack dropped out, I am going to add Tommy Thompson.

[Tim]

He's got ya, Paul. He even got his "state of mind" right. Of course, you're probably the only liberal/progressive blogger who will ever have a visit from Brownback.

[jim rowen]

Some Republicans are pushing this to help bail out Milwaukee County's foundering parks and their boy, Scott Walker, fyi.