Turning the apple cart over

State Sen. Jerry Petrowski (R-Marathon City) and Rep.

John Spiros (R-Marshfield) are counting on you not to read this editorial. They are hoping that you will see it has to do with Tax Incremental Finance (TIF) and turn the page. The last thing they want is for you to figure out what the bill they authored and sent through the legislature will do to your property taxes. They are counting on you not to understand how your own government works.

Let’s overturn their applecart. First, let’s recite some basic facts. The bill sponsored by the two legislators lets the Village of Marathon City’s spend money in Tax Incremental District No. 1 (the business park that includes MaraTech, McDonalds, NAPA, et cetera) for one extra year, through Jan. 3, 2023. And it lets the village collect Tax Incremental District (TID) No. 1 payments for an extra seven years, that is, through Jan. 3, 2035.

We can estimate (using this coming year’s tax levies and rates) what it will mean to delay closing out TID No. 1 not in 2028, the planned date, but seven years later. The delay will cost a typical Marathon City resident with a $150,000 house something like $346 a year. Multiply that by seven years and you get $2,422.

That’s real money. The cost of the Petrowski and Spiros bill won’t just affect Marathon City residents, but every property owner in Marathon School District. That includes Sen. Petrowski himself, a town of Stettin resident. We calculate the seven year cost to delay closing out TID No. 1 to the senator on his primary residence to be roughly $869.

Again, that’s real money. The argument for the bill is that it will help pay for a frontage road north of STH 29 for a business that, if we are to believe village president David Belanger, will spend $9.5 million to improve the property and employ 50 people.

That’s all well, good and fine, but we don’t see that as justification for the village to break its promise with every area taxpayer and close out TID No. 1 seven years after an agreed upon date. Taxpayers have patiently waited nearly a quarter century to make good on their investment in the village’s business park. State law should not upend the normal TIF process. To do so makes a mockery of all the TIF plans, public hearings and sanctimonious statements about protecting the taxpayer interest we heard when TID No. 1 was created.

A better way to do this would be for the village to close out TID No. 1 as planned and create a new TID for a business park expansion north of STH 29. But there’s a hitch. Marathon City can’t create a new TID. It already has more than 12 percent of its property in TIDs.

The Petrowski and Spiros bill provides the village a legal means to break state law and expand a TID when no other municipality would be able to do so. The result will be monstrous. Following development north of STH 29, the village will have 26 percent of its property in a TID. That’s better than double the legal limit.

The Petrowski and Spiros bill now sits on Gov. Tony Evers desk and we have little indication whether the governor will sign or veto the legislation. We hope for a veto, but note that Democrats in both the Assembly and Senate did not raise objections to the legislation.

TIF is controversial and we have criticized TIF in numerous editorials over the years. But let’s place that concern to the margin for the moment. Our present argument is not that we should do away with the state’s TIF law, but that, if we are going to have a TIF law, it should be followed by all municipalities without special carve-outs. You can’t give Marathon City special rights to development under TIF that no other municipality can enjoy.

Actually, anybody who does support TIF as a development tool should oppose the Petrowski and Spiros loophole legislation. TIF is development by the book; not a free for all.