Question No. 6: Dan Carpenter Response

TAXPAYER BILL OF RIGHTS. Doesn’t that just sound great? Taxpayers like you and me will actually have rights. Open the gates, here comes the Trojan horse! This is just another way for our politicians to shift the burden of providing services to local government while they continue to collect and spend our tax dollars on their special interest groups.

Meanwhile, local government will shift from taxes to fees. If our cities cannot afford garbage collection it will be left to private businesses that will bill us each month. Any parent will tell you how expensive it is to pay the fees for school-related activities. When a district can no longer afford to bus children to school parents will either pay a fee or bring each child to school. When the cost of heating and maintenance climb, school years will be shortened and activities eliminated.

You will pay taxes for things like parks and then pay fees to use them. We are already seeing this with the children playing soccer at Winnebago County Park. Perhaps the State could provide credit cards for every citizen and we could swipe them every time we drive down a street, have a picnic in the park, launch a boat or catch a fish.

The State is currently considering raising the fees for driving a car, hunting and fishing. I oppose raising these fees while our politicians continue to spend uncontrollably. The citizens of Wisconsin must wake up and understand that TABOR IS A GIMMICK.

By opposing TABOR I clearly do not favor raising taxes. Citizens need to be vigilant over local and State government. The Oshkosh Area School District recently increased its budget by 8.5%. Only one person appeared at the meeting to protest the raise. This huge increase came at a time when the Board is in a contract costing 1.2 million dollars to oversee the custodial staff in our schools. This is the type of wasteful spending that occurs at all levels.

Running for State Assembly can be frustrating when people praise a constitutional amendment that will lead us down the disastrous road already traveled by Colorado. Yet, people won’t take the time to appear before city councils, school boards or county boards to voice their opinions. Colorado realizes that they made a mistake and is trying to take steps in the wake of this disaster to correct the problems. Whether they recover or not remains to be seen.

Instead of TABOR, we need to address the reason for high taxes. In a letter proposing the idea, the Hon. Frank Lassee stated that “Tax-spending special interest groups have tremendous influence in Madison—far more influence than is wielded by the tax-paying public. A TABOR would help defend the taxpayers’ interest by shoring up the state’s structural defenses against big spenders.” Why not stop the influence of these groups? Over the years special interest groups have poured billions of dollars into the pockets of politicians. Our incumbent representative accepted thousands of dollars from groups like chiropractors. Last year he introduced legislation that benefited that group and, had it passed, would have cost the taxpayers $155,000 a year to start. This is how your State government continues to grow. We need to severely limit campaign fundraising. And, voters need to stop electing candidates who raise and spend the most money. The citizens of Wisconsin share the responsibility for the financial situation we find ourselves in by repeatedly reelecting the same legislators who have raised taxes year after year to sponsor their “friends in need”. We could solve all the financial problems that Wisconsin has and have plenty of money to fund all programs by replacing every politician, breaking the bond between legislators and the financial bloodsuckers and seriously revising campaign finance laws.