Janesville Residents Expected To Pay Highest Vehicle Tax In State

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It was only last year April when I predicted that an $80 local wheel tax wasn't too far down the road for Janesville residents.

Well, according to a Janesville Gazette article, the Janesville city council is proposing to almost quadruple the recently minted $10 Walker vehicle tax to $48!! At $48, Janesville will have the highest municipal vehicle tax in Wisconsin, nearly 2 ½ times that of Marxist commie Milwaukee.

This latest tax proposal however should be dubbed the "Forward Janesville Vehicle Tax" since it was their leaders who fought tooth-and-nail to shift state revenues away from local roads. Remember, state revenues are monies collected from local jurisdictions in the first place. It's not the other way around.

Janesville "leaders" and planners are not entirely innocent in this as the new tax is aimed to make good on all the broken promises an expanding tax base by sprawl building new homes and roads was supposed to bring. The Club for Growth's expanding tax base meme, not sustainability, was and remains the core principle that drives Janesville's so called Comprehensive Growth Plan. If you're familiar with my blog, you'll know this is not a new narrative springing out of political expediency. I've been on this for years.

It's a broken down failure that continues to be foisted upon the population by the area's political elite syndicates such as Forward Janesville and the Rock County 5.0. Not ironically, they all strongly support Gov. Walker's defunding treatment towards local roads.

Of note in the Gazette article is no mention by name of Gov. Walker or cuts and shifts in state aid away from local roads. Nor do they remind anyone of Forward Janesville's public push to short local roads of state revenue. Instead the FJ/RC5 mouthpiece paints the vehicle tax increase as a result of state imposed caps on the operating levy. However, when there were no caps in the years before Walker, the Gazette and their conservative reader base screamed about hikes in local taxes. It's those democrats they said. It's also worth noting that Janesville never had a wheel tax before Scott Walker was elected.

Finally, the Walker supporting Gazette quickly issued an editorial supporting the large hike for the local vehicle tax.

ADDITIONAL:

RNR - Janesville, Is the I39/90 Expansion Worth an $80 Annual Vehicle Tax? (April, 2012)

RNR - If We Can't Afford The Roads We Have Now - Go Bigger and More Expensive (May, 2013)