Don’t bank on bigger tax cuts from the state this year. With Governor Scott Walker’s budget proposal including a modest property tax – about five dollars on the median priced home each of the next two years – Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch was saying this week that more tax cuts will be a priority, if revenue estimates come in higher than anticipated this spring.
“If money is coming in greater than we had anticipated, that should be going back to the people who are earning it,” Huebsch said during a WisPolitics luncheon in Madison “Some people will say…let’s put more money in the university. Others will say K-12 education. There will be a diverse area as to where to go.”
Huebsch’s statements appear to be at odds with how the Republican leader in the state Assembly views the situation.
“Unless we have some huge amount of new revenue that comes in over the course of the revenue estimates – a billion dollars or something like that – we’ve got fix transportation, we’ve got to figure out what to do with this reduction in the UW, and we’ve got to worry about K-12,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Thursday.
Vos (R-Rochester) said he’d like to focus this legislative session on increasing government efficiency, with an eye towards a “significant tax cut” in the next session.