Technical College - End the Tax Travesty

As tax bills will be sent out in less than two months, this time of year always leads to me ponder the interesting status of technical colleges in Wisconsin. IF I were to be in the State Assembly or Senate, one of the first pieces of legislation I would introduce would be a bill to end the unelected status of technical college boards. It comes down to one simple concept which led, in part, to the formation of our nation - no taxation without representation.

Technical college boards are not elected, and that is where the system breaks down. According to the Legislative Reference Bureau, a technical college board is made up of nine members who are appointed by a committee of local elected officials under a representation plan based on population distribution within the district, including women and minorities. Two members must be employers and two members must be employees. One member must be a school district administrator of a district that lies within the technical college district, and one must be an elected official. All members serve for three-year terms. The advocates of the current system point to the fact that the members are appointed by "elected "officials, as if this somehow circumvents the concept of no taxation without representation. I doubt any of us know which local officials appoint the members of the Moraine Park Technical College Board. I know I don't, and I have never appointed a member.

I firmly believe that taxing bodies which do not answer directly to the voting public, will find themselves with a diminished incentive to economize, and a greater likelihood of giving into special interests. In the past year, Germantown, which is a part of the Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) District, may have shown us the first glimpse of the future. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, most Germantown residents who choose to attend tech college go to a tech college other than MATC, but Germantown property taxpayers send MATC roughly $5 million every year, and nobody from Germantown is on the board. As a result, there has been an effort by Germantown to leave the MATC district. Washington, Ozaukee or Waukesha Counties send tens of millions of tax dollars to MATC’s appointed board either, but they still have to pay tens of millions of dollars in property taxes each year.

One of the checks on local governments, when it comes to taxes, is the levy limits. Last year, The Governor used his veto authority to eliminate the levy limit placed on technical colleges. The budget approved by the Legislature in 2007 had imposed a cap on growth for technical colleges at four percent. In light of the recent taxing trends of Wisconsin's technical colleges, the logic behind removing the levy limits seems to be flawed. According to the non-partisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, technical college tax levies have increased from $251 million in 1992-'93 to $622 million in 2005-'06. That’s an increase of almost 150 percent, twice the increase in overall levies during the same time period. Governor Doyle also exempted technical colleges from levy limits in the previous state budget.

Back in 2003, in an effort to increase local control over the state's technical college system, a legislative task force has recommended that the colleges present their annual budgets before county boards. It was one of several recommendations made by the Assembly Speaker's Task Force on the Wisconsin Technical College System, appointed by then-Assembly Speaker John Gard (R-Peshtigo), who is now running for Congress. The proposal, along with other legislation aimed at making the boards elected, have all died before reaching the floor of the Legislature for debate.

The problem is not just in southern Wisconsin. Back in 2005, the Sister Bay Village sent its payment to the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay under protest, adding this little written note - "The services in the form of course offerings for northern Door County and the location of such courses are not commensurate with the taxes paid. In fact, it has been calculated that for the annual taxes paid from northern Door County, we could send every child from Gibraltar School to Harvard."

Where could we send our children? Yale? Cornell? How about right here to Ripon College...