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Fresh off lying about state regulated fees for automobile registration and the size of the state government’s fiscal deficit, Jim Doyle wants to push through Wisconsin another massive tax increase on local property taxes, only this time he doesn’t have to feign it under a “tax freeze” since he isn’t running for election this next November:

Gov. Jim Doyle will ask the Legislature to let local governments raise their fall property tax levies by 4% - double the limit of the past two years, but a rate the governor said would still control local taxes.

If the plan is passed by the Legislature, Doyle estimates it would cause a $75 increase - or 2.7% - in the December property tax bill on the median-valued Wisconsin home. Last year, the tax bill on that home was $2,730.

As even Jim Doyle’s friends at the Journal Sentinel acknolwedge, last year’s property tax levies rose far and away above the 2% “tax freeze” he signed into law:

Public school spending is controlled by separate formulas. Partly because of the passage of so many local referendums, the average statewide levy for public schools rose 5.4% last year, according to the non-partisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.

Here’s the money paragraph:

“We’re doing what we did last time: Making sure we’re funding schools, giving local governments a little more (taxing) room and holding the levies well below inflation,” Doyle said.

Well below inflaton?? Has anyone in Madison been paying attention to reality for the past 20-some years? America hasn’t experienced four percent inflation since 1990, or 18 years ago this year.

Thus, just as last year Jim Doyle’s property tax increase of 5.4% blew past the inflation rate of 2.5%, so will it this year, unless the U.S. Treasury decides to start handing out bags of cash to consumers.

Of course, we can’t expect the Journal Sentinel to point out these facts to a mostly oblivious readership.

Update: One last thing. I will take an entire year of off criticism of the Journal Sentinel if for just once it can use brackets correctly instead of parentheses. Are these MPS graduates or what?

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