Is there no end to the lack of understanding of taxes that Zach Brandon will continue to display? Is he so focused on the spin he’s willing to ignore the facts? Or doesn’t he get it?
The Isthmus Daily Page wrote a story about the Friday walk with the Mayor in which Alder Brandon says the following:
Zach Brandon discussed the error and his continuing thoughts on the proposed ordinance. He says:
I think the lion’s share of the report dealt with the impact on business, not the impact on the city budget. They stand behind and say those are accurate numbers. It’s unfortunate they misplaced the decimal point with the city numbers, but the message remains about one of the things we didn’t really think about. Will there be an impact in the city budget?
Although we now know that the extreme of it wouldn’t be $21 million, it would be $2.1 million, or maybe even a less than that at a million, the real question there is at what point are average taxpayers or homeowners willing to spend money to support this ordinance.
Um . . . it wasn’t just the decimal point that was wrong – it was also the fact that they attributed all of the loss in taxes to the City of Madison, and forgot to attribute taxes to Dane County, the School District and the Tech Schools. You’d think a tax-capper would understand this. Or, as the WSJ puts it:
But a Wisconsin State Journal analysis found a major miscalculation of city property tax revenues — a decimal point is in the wrong place — that inflates projected property tax losses tenfold.
Further, the study indicates the city would be hit by the tax loss. But the numbers used to make calculations are for collections by the city, Dane County, the Madison School District, and Madison Area Technical College, so any loss would be shared.
Wanna try again Zach?
