An appropriate stanza from Kansas' "Portrait (He Knew)"
He was in search of an answer
The nature of what we are
He was trying to do it a new way
He was bright as a star
But nobody understood him
"His numbers are not the way"
He's lost in the deepest enigma
Which no one's unraveled today
If it weren't for Scott McCallum, we never would have gotten as close to getting a handle on taxes in WisTAXsin as we did.
I am serious, and don't call me Shirley 
You have nailed it--the complexity of the budget has, in effect, made ALL taxes "taxes." They are not State taxes, because the State feeds the locals.
I can't resist observing that the system was built that way precisely to make it impossible to dismantle.
Of course, the 'greed factor' of locals and the State was not quite as, ah, intense as it is today.
McCallum's proposal was correct. Short of literally dismantling the entire system and rebuilding it with straight-lines for accountability, his proposal is the only one that could work as intended.
Too bad he was such a twit.
McCallum was done in more by his boat and plane and "big spender" line than his shared revenue hit(although that also played a role).
The neat thing is, and Ellis & Cowles are responsible for this, that the state will always have a $1.5 billion structural deficit going into the next biennium as long as we have Shared Revenue. Ellis & Cowles pushed off Shared Revenue into the second and third years of a biennium, committing the state to funding a billion in the next budget cycle. Funding two-thirds of schools, another Ellis-Cowles idea, is another $500 million into the next biennium.
Oh, the legacy of Mike and Rob. No wonder they hated McCallum, he would have taken away their pet issue.
This should be required reading for all the alledged "conservatives" in the state capitol. Good job Dennis. The Wisconsin fiscal shell game that passes money from one government to another needs to end.
Amen. Scott McCallum had the gonads to stand up to local officials. The GOP legislature capitulated as soon as some ho-dunk mayor started talking of running against them because of the shared revenue plan.
The original tax freeze? McCallum's budget adjustment plan of 2002. Tougher than TABOR? McCallum's budget adjustment plan of 2002. Tax freeze on MATC and every other technical college's levy? McCallum's budget adjustment plan of 2002.
A conservative clairvoyant, prescient and god-send. Scott McCallum.
Nice revisionist history.
Nixon was a statesman by the end of his life as well.
Commenting by HaloScan
