MADISON – A vast majority of Wisconsin adults say state lawmakers should have passed a bill negotiated by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican legislative leaders that cut property and income taxes, routed more state funds to schools and sent income tax filers a rebate check, according to a new state poll.
The legislation was put forward earlier this month by the bipartisan group of state leaders after months of talks at a time when Wisconsinites are under more economic pressure due to rising inflation, property taxes and household costs.
It passed the state Assembly but died in the state Senate in a stunning vote when all 15 Democrats and three Republicans joined to kill it.
Its death came after Republican candidate for governor Tom Tiffany made public and private calls to GOP lawmakers to vote against the bill and nearly all of the Democratic candidates for governor said it was a bad proposal and should be defeated.
But according to a new survey from the Marquette University Law School, 80% percent of adults in the Badger State said lawmakers should have passed the legislation while 11% said the bill should have been defeated. Just 9% said they didn’t know what lawmakers should have done. The survey was released overnight May 26.
The high support was bipartisan − a rarity in battleground Wisconsin. Eighty-two percent of Democrats, 77% of Republicans and 81% of independent voters said lawmakers should have passed the bill, according to the poll results. The support also spanned all media markets in the state.
The bill, which would have drawn from the state’s projected $2.5 billion in reserves projected for June 30, would have spent state money to lower out-of-pocket costs for taxpayers and schools, decreasing school property taxes by around 5% statewide.
The measure also would have delivered taxpayers up to $300 in rebate checks, given schools millions more in funding for special education costs and eliminated taxes on tips and overtime.
Opponents who voted it down said the $1.8 billion in new commitments spent too much of the state’s funds to support it. An analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau found without any new economic growth, the state budget would see a $2.9 billion structural deficit by the end of the next two-year state budget.
Data from the fiscal bureau shows the last time the state experienced no economic growth, or no increase in general purpose revenue tax collections that was not a result of withholding table changes, was during the 2008 Great Recession.
When asked whether it would be better to delay providing the funds to schools and taxpayers, noting the opponents’ fiscal arguments, 69% of Wisconsin adults polled by Marquette said it’s better to spend the funds now while 21% said lawmakers should wait.
The opposition from Democrats and Tiffany comes as both are vying to have power over what is spent in the next state budget, including spending of the $2.5 billion projected surplus that this bill would have spent down.
Just more than half of Wisconsin adults polled by Marquette − 54% and 53% respectively − said the opposition from Democratic candidates for governor and Tiffany was the wrong thing to do, while 65% said Evers’ support was the right thing to do. The question had larger percentages of adults who didn’t know what to think, however.
In Tiffany’s case, 29% said they didn’t know whether it was the right or wrong position, for example. For Democratic candidates for governor, 27% said they didn’t know.
The spending plan was released at a time when household costs are skyrocketing for average Wisconsinites. Ballooning property tax bills have hit residents especially hard after Evers and Republican lawmakers passed a state budget that did not include any new money for schools to help pay for automatic per pupil revenue limit increases Evers included in a previous state budget.
Those increases, effects of an Evers veto that locked in the funding bumps for 400 years, are central to Tiffany’s campaign for governor. At the same time, the congressman leveled public pressure on GOP lawmakers to vote down the bill that would have provided relief from the same tax increases.
Democratic candidates for governor who opposed the deal have also called for more funding for schools, like the deal would have provided. State Rep. Francesca Hong called the proposal a “con of election-year gimmicks.”
The episode catapulted behind-the-scenes fissures between Democratic lawmakers and Evers into public view and pitted Republicans who supported the deal against those who didn’t.
Since the May 13 vote, a group of Republicans in vulnerable Assembly districts have urged Evers to bring lawmakers back into special session to revive the proposal.
When asked whether the fate of this bill will factor in their votes for governor and state Legislature in November, 25% of the adults surveyed said the candidates’ positions will be very important for their vote and another 48% said it will be somewhat important.
Twenty-one percent said it is not too important and 6% say it’s not at all important.
The survey was conducted May 20-21 − about a week after the bill was voted down. Marquette interviewed 454 Wisconsin adults. The poll has a margin of error of +/-5.5 percentage points.
Molly Beck and Jessie Opoien can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com and jessie.opoien@jrn.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsinites overwhelmingly back failed tax deal in Marquette poll
Reporting by Molly Beck and Jessie Opoien, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
