The last few weeks have, undoubtedly been some of the busiest,
yet enjoyable, from a policy standpoint, of my tenure as your
State Representative. In addition to releasing several
consequential legislative initiatives--two of which I have been
working on for nearly two years--I had the opportunity to join
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in providing
much-needed assistance to those who are homeless.
Thank you to everyone who attended my in-district listening
sessions, last month. I appreciated your attendance and
willingness to express your concerns regarding the budget and
direction our state is heading. I make it a point to keep
your views and thoughts in mind before voting on legislation. As
always, if you have comments, questions, concerns, or need
assistance dealing with a state agency, do not hesitate to
contact my office.
Homelessness agenda
As denoted, I joined my colleagues, this week, in supporting
Assembly Bills 234, 235, 236, and 237, designed to eradicate
homelessness in Wisconsin. The aforementioned bills take
crucial first steps in providing resources and direction for
homelessness services and include the establishment of an
interagency council on homelessness to better coordinate
strategies and funding.
Addressing the issue of homelessness is a priority in the
Assembly Republican Forward Agenda. The bills were passed
with bipartisan support in the assembly and were sent to the
senate for final passage.
In addition to the establishment of an interagency council on
homelessness, these bills would allow the state to better
utilize existing funds for combating homelessness, create a
pilot program to provide funding for a community program
designed to connect homeless adults with permanent employment,
and authorize the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development
Authority (WHEDA) to prioritize chronically homeless individuals
and families for housing vouchers.
I came to Madison to make a difference in people's lives and to
help individuals who may be down on their luck. I look
forward to seeing final approval of this legislation in the
senate and having the governor sign this package into law.
Bonding for local governments
On Wednesday, May 3, 2017 public hearings were held in the
Assembly Local Government Committee and Senate Committee on
Economic Development Committee, on two bills I coauthored with
Senator Duey Stroebel relating to bonding requirements for local
units of government.
The first, Assembly Bill 168 (Senate Bill 123), ensures property
taxes are properly distributed to local taxing entities,
chiefly, schools, municipalities, counties, and technical
colleges. At this writing, most property tax payments made
in December and January, are paid to, and collected by,
municipal treasurers. Municipalities retain a share of the
property tax and distribute the remainder to other taxing
jurisdictions.
Due to the antiquated nature of the statute in which this is
addressed--it has not been amended since 1991--Wisconsin's
surety bond threshold is no longer sufficient to cover the state
and county tax levy in the event a municipality is unable to
distribute the property tax.
Quite simply, this legislation updates Wisconsin State Statutes
70.67 to require municipalities to enact either an ordinance
guaranteeing proper distribution of property taxes to other
taxing jurisdictions, or to attain a surety bond in an amount
not less than the total state and county property tax levy.
The purpose of Assembly Bill 169 (Senate Bill
122) is to make filing of official bonds permissive, not
mandatory. At this writing, state law stipulates that
certain municipal officials must, as a prerequisite to assuming
office, file an official bond. The purpose of the bond is
to protect the municipality and taxpayers against any loss of
public funds which might occur when public officials fail to
perform the duties of their respective office.
Municipalities find these bonding requirements
confusing and an unnecessary expense. Many have
justifiably asked why it is necessary to pay for bonds for
various elected and appointed municipal officials when the
municipality has also purchased employee dishonesty and other
insurance coverage options to protect them and taxpayers against
losses caused by employee wrongdoing.
Testifying before the Assembly Local Government Committee
on Assembly Bills 168 and 169.
Testifying before the Senate Committee on Economic
Development, Commerce, and Local Government on Senate Bills 122
and 123.
Waste heat recovery
This session, Senator Roger Roth (R-Appleton)
and I drafted legislation to promote waste heat recovery in
industries and manufacturing facilities throughout Wisconsin.
Waste heat is generated as a byproduct from all industrial
processes that involve combining raw materials into a useable
product. Too often, heat energy is inadvertently vented
through smokestacks and wasted. Assembly Bill 204 would
designate heat energy as a renewable resource as defined under
Wisconsin's Renewable Portfolio Standards, or RPS, as it is
colloquially known.
Including the new collection technology under
RPS will encourage more industries and manufacturers to promote
waste heat recovery procedures to lessen utility expenses and
potentially use the recovered heat for future energy generation.
Investment in heat recovery equipment has provided both economic
and environmental benefits to a number of states around the
country. Moreover, a number of our Midwestern neighbors
(Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, and Michigan) have adopted language
to define waste heat as a renewable resource or energy
efficiency. This legislation benefits local companies such
as Charter Steel and Rockwell Automation.
This legislation was passed by the Wisconsin
State Senate, this week and now heads to the Assembly for final
passage.
Threshold Modernization Initiative
I recently coauthored the Threshold
Modernization Initiative with Senators Duey Stroebel
(R-Cedarburg) and Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg). Competitive
bidding has proven, time and again, to save taxpayers copious
amounts of money on a myriad of capital improvement projects.
As the cost of these projects has increased--precipitated in
part by inflation--the threshold for triggering competitive
bidding has remained stagnant since 2005. As a result,
local governments have been required to competitively bid for
small-dollar projects that in the past, would have fallen under
the cap levels. This legislation increases the competitive
bidding threshold for local governments from $25,000 to $75,000.
Incidentally, Governor Walker's biennial budget proposed
increasing the aforementioned threshold from $50,000 to $100,000
for state projects.
What is more, this bill requires that school
districts employ competitive bidding on public works projects
exceeding $75,000. Current law exempts school districts
from having to use competitive bidding. This bill, quite simply,
requires school districts to become more fiscally responsible,
by employing competitive bidding for large expenditures, chiefly
capital improvement projects. Additionally, the Threshold
Modernization Initiative codifies best practices employed by
innumerable school districts that currently have self-imposed
bidding requirements.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Public
Instruction, Wisconsin taxpayers, in 2016, approved, via the
referendum process, $1.34 billion in debt issuance for capital
improvement projects. Moreover, in 2017 alone, Wisconsin
taxpayers approved more than $700 million via the referendum
process; none of which were required to competitively bid their
projects. Ensuring that, going forward, these projects are
subject to competitive bidding requirements, will potentially
save taxpayers millions of dollars annually and ensure that
school districts are using the lowest responsible bidder,
analogous to their local government partners.
Exemptions to the bidding requirements will be
made for emergencies or natural disasters. In addition,
this proposal retains the existing $25,000 threshold for
horizontal public works projects.
Homeowners Rights Initiative
Senator Dave Craig (R-Town of Vernon) and I are
introduced the Homeowners Rights Initiative, which affords
property owners with the right to refuse entry by assessors into
their home.
This legislation serves to affirm the right of
property owners to refuse entry into their home and expressly
provides for the right to appeal to the Board of Review, even if
entry by the assessor had been refused. This bill further
provides that an assessor may not increase a property's
valuation based the property owner's refusal to allow entry.
Additionally, this bill requires property assessors to provide a
notice of "Property Owner Rights" to property owners when
requesting to view the interior of a residence informing the
owner of their rights. Also, under this legislation
property owners do not forfeit their right to come before
the Board of Review to contest an assessment if the property
owner does not provide income information to the assessor.
Further, the existing law (Wis. Stat 70.47 (7) (aa)
prohibiting a property owner from appealing the Board of Review
is currently being challenged in an amicus curiae brief
submitted by the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) in
Milewski v. Town of Dover. The case is currently awaiting a
decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In the brief, DOJ
argued that the statutory prohibition was "implicitly repealed"
by the state legislature when the legislature adopted statute
70.05 (4m) which expressly states that a property owner may deny
entry to an assessor. This bill will address the problem
so future property owners will know their rights and be able to
exercise them without penalty.
Testifying with Senator Dave Craig before the Senate
Committee on Economic Development, Commerce, and Local
Government on behalf of our Homeowners Rights Initiative.
Dark Stores
For the past two years, I have been researching the intricacies
of the "dark store" assessment issue. After two years of
research and countless meeting with key stakeholders, I have
released two bills designed to prevent a drastic tax shift from
retailers to homeowners and municipalities. This
legislation affects communities across Wisconsin and is certain
to generate copious media attention in the months ahead. I
unveiled these proposals at a
press conference surrounded by legislators from both sides
of the aisle and local mayors.
The first of these proposals, LRB 0373 that I coauthored with
Senator Roger Roth (R-Appleton), codifies Wisconsin case law and
guidance provide by the Department of Revenue's Wisconsin
Property Tax Assessment Manual, to clarify that when
assessors use sales of comparable properties for determining the
value of a property, they must use properties that are within
the same market segment and similar to the property being
assessed with regard to age, condition, use, type of
construction, location, design, and economic characteristic.
Our legislation adopts language from the aforementioned manual
to exhibit best practices during assessments.
The second proposal, LRB 0372, that I coauthored with Senator
Duey Stroebel (R-Cedarburg) relates to property tax assessments
regarding leased property and seeks to overturn the 2008 Supreme
Court decision, Walgreen Company v. City of Madison
(2008), to convince courts that their assessed values should be
less than half-of-the actual sale prices of the properties.
Attorneys representing single-tenant retail facilities maintain
that the actual sale prices of the stores do not represent
market value and underlying leases are not the most effective
mechanism for determining the property's value for property tax
purposes.
In 2016, for example, a single-tenant retail facility in
Wauwatosa sold for $8.67 million. Yet, the city is limited
to assessing the property at $3.48 million. The city
assessor would like to assess the property based on the recent
sale price, but is prohibited from doing so by the Walgreen
Company v. City of Madison (2008) decision. Indeed,
the Wisconsin Court of Appeals recently relied on the
aforementioned case to affirm that a single-tenant retail
facility in Appleton should be valued at $1.8 million, much less
than the city's $4.4 million assessment, which was based on an
actual sale of the property. Appleton must now make a
$350,000 tax refund.
It is critical to the fairness of our tax system that all
properties be assessed at fair-market value. The purpose
of this decision is simple: to ensure equity in the property
assessment process and prevent more of the property tax burden
from being shifted to homeowners.
Unveiling my dark store legislation at a bipartisan press
conference.
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