Republicans in charge of Legislature unlikely to give voters the option of raising their sales tax

MADISON - Republicans who control the Legislature won't let the sales tax go up and will substantially pare back Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' plans to spend $2.4 billion on building projects, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Wednesday.

"There is no chance this is going to happen. It is dead on arrival. Never going to happen," the Rochester Republican said of Evers' proposal to let local officials raise the sales tax with the permission of voters. 

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu of Oostburg concurred, saying at a Wisconsin Counties Association forum that he saw no need to let the sales tax go up. He called the prospect of an increase "very doubtful."

Evers last month recommended allowing counties and larger municipalities to raise the sales tax by half a percentage point if voters approved their plans. The sales tax is 5.5% in most parts of the state and under his plan it could rise to as much as 6.5% in some places if both a municipality and a county in the same area approved increases.

But that proposal is on its way out, according to Vos.

He and LeMahieu said they would toss aside much of Evers' $91 billion two-year spending plan, though they said they supported parts of it. 

Both said they wanted to put more money toward broadband, though perhaps not the $200 million Evers has proposed. LeMahieu said he thought Republicans would largely stick by the governor's transportation plan and said he backs Evers' proposal to expand I-94 in Milwaukee between the Zoo and Marquette interchanges. 

The Legislature's budget committee will spend the next few months rewriting the budget. Evers can remove parts of their version of the budget using his line-item veto powers. 

As part of his budget, Evers wants to borrow nearly $2 billion to fund $2.4 billion worth of building projects. Of that, $1 billion would go toward buildings on University of Wisconsin campuses, $163 million toward a new state office building in Milwaukee and $40 million toward a new facility for the Milwaukee Public Museum and Betty Brinn Children's Museum. 

Vos implied he didn't want to fund constructing the long-planned office building in Milwaukee or approving initial work on one in Madison. He otherwise did not specify which projects he wanted to put off.

He said it didn't make sense to build more buildings when state employees have been working from home during the coronavirus pandemic.

"There is nowhere near that level of appetite for borrowing to build office buildings and things like that," Vos said. "The very idea that the governor does not have a plan to return workers back to the buildings we already own but we’re going to propose to build a brand new office building in Milwaukee, a brand new office building in Madison, have all kinds of additional office space, but we’re not even sure what the world’s going to look like — I cannot imagine those going through."

Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, a Democrat from Oshkosh, praised much of Evers' budget and said Republicans need to start saying what they'll do differently. 

"Hopefully we can move the needle but I do think we're going to need answers on which investments aren't a priority from Republicans if we're going to see criticism of the governor's investments," Hintz said. 

Alex Roe, UW System’s senior associate vice president for capital planning and budget, said in their budget request system officials prioritized academic facilities and maintenance work over student-fee funded projects such as new dining halls, dorms and student unions.

“Essentially, to be sensitive to the fact that we want to take another look at what happens once we finish with COVID,” Roe said of the decision to focus on academic buildings. “But I will tell you that every project that we put in this budget reflects a high-priority need.”

Devi Shastri of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Contact Patrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.