Gordon and Gregg

I've now attended two of 54th District State Representative Gordon Hintz's budget forums. The latest, held last night at Oshkosh City Hall, put the focus on the state's shared revenue program. What I pulled from the presentation was that while the state budget (which is supposed to be passed by the legislature and signed by the governor by the end of June but will probably carry over into the fall) will not abandon municipalities, it does continue the now long-term trend of forcing cities to rely more on local property taxes and fees to maintain a core set of services. The state budget also continues the abusive practice of robbing municipalities of local control by placing them under state imposed levy limits.

Representative Hintz has received praise for holding these forums, and it's much deserved. He does an excellent job of explaining the state budget process while encouraging feedback and dialogue. Unlike his predecessor Gregg Underheim, who never really seemed interested in working with local government officials in any meaningful way, Gordon clearly wants to establish open lines of communication between his office, the Common Council, School Board, and County Board of Supervisors.

Having said all of that, I must also say that there is something Underheim-ish in Gordon's budget forums that I find frustrating. Republican Underheim served as 54th district rep for 19 years before being defeated by Hintz in 2006 [June 13 Update: Many thanks to Bill Wingren for emailing to remind me that Hintz actually defeated Julie Pung-Leschke in 2006!], and during that time I probably heard him speak about the budget about a dozen times. His general themes were always the same: the state spends the bulk of its general taxpayer fund on five items (K-12 aids, medical costs, shared revenue, the UW system, corrections), any increase in one of these areas could not come without a decrease in another, and increases in the state income or sales tax as a possible solution to our budget woes are off the table. One always left an Underheim presentation feeling kind of demobilized; the governor and legislative leaders were going to do what they wanted to anyway so the best we could hope for from Gregg was that he at least explain their shenanigans to us and hopefully do what he could to make their actions less harmful for the district.

Gordon certainly "feels our pain" more than Gregg, and he looks genuinely sad while explaining to local officials how the state government will screw them once again this year. And while Underheim was blind towards and sometimes even an apologist for the well-connected special interest cesspool of influence peddling masquerading as a "budget process," I have to believe that Gordon knows that the system is rotten to the core. But one never gets the feeling that Gordon is really going to fight hard to change that system, evidenced most clearly by his refusal to take a leadership role in support of Rep. Cory Mason's effort to open the closed partisan caucuses. It's hard to imagine how we the people will get our budget back as long as partisans are able to dissect it behind closed doors whenever they see fit.

Gordon Hintz is smart, articulate, policy wonkish, and accessible. Those are great qualities which will make it very difficult for the Republicans, Greens, or anyone else to defeat him in '08. Unfortunately, those qualities count for little in the contemporary Wisconsin legislature, where state reps are expected to be loyal to their party leadership above all else. Yes, I know that Gordon's Democratic supporters can provide a list of 85 million things he's done to defy the party leadership and reform the system since November of '06, but more dispassionate observers know that Gordon, like Gregg Underheim, is many things but maverick is not one of them. He could prove me wrong today by joining Cory Mason and Dean Kaufert in sponsoring AB-273 which would open the closed partisan caucuses.