Mandates

To the Editor:

This last week we find the state is considering a 1 percent increase in the sales tax along with Sheboygan County bureaucrats wanting a ½ percent sales tax. That means the Sheboygan County citizens can expect to be paying a 6½ percent sales tax in the very near future.

Here in Sheboygan County, we have two or more county departments that the county supervisors have allowed to grow out of control the same as the fatal nursing home that had to be sold. The necessary tax relief we have had for the last three years is due mainly to that one item. Now the Highway Department is ripe for reduction to the necessary maintenance functions and can be halved in manpower and get out of the highway building business.

The Human Resources Department is another monster with budgets that continue to grow by millions every year trying to satisfy every ill not of its own, making the state “mandates.” The waste there is monumental and the bureaucrats love it.

One simple problem that no one seems to understand is that the definition of “mandate” only means “to give permission to do a thing,” not a law. Look it up in a dictionary. This excuse for bureaucracy spending the taxpayers broke or even in the guise of sales taxes is not acceptable.

Threats by the bureaucracy to reduce safety are another sign of degenerative behavior by the bureaucrats.

The savings in waste and unnecessary manpower and their accompanying labor costs alone would save millions for the taxpayer, and the need for any type of additional taxes in any form is completely unacceptable in the fifth-highest taxed state in the United States.
Carter S. Pawlus,
Sheboygan