Joint Finance Committee Keeps Oil Tax,
Despite Concerns from Rural Democrats
MADISON, Wis. (May 29, 2009) – Grassroots contacts from thousands of rural constituents have helped persuade at least eight Assembly Democrats to ask that a new motor fuel tax be modified or dropped from the pending state budget bill, Cooperative Network President and CEO Bill Oemichen said Friday. Despite this, the Joint Finance Committee advanced the oil tax when a motion to delete it from the budget failed on a 6-10 vote.
By late Thursday, seven lawmakers had signed onto a letter for delivery to the Joint Finance Committee co-chairs, State Sen. Mark Miller (D-Monona) and State Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison). The letter advises that while the proposed gross receipts tax aims at “big oil,” in reality “the tax as proposed will hit hardest the cooperatives and other local fuel suppliers headquartered in our districts.”
Signing the letter to Miller and Pocan were State Reps. Fred Clark (D-Baraboo), Chris Danou (D-Trempealeau), Phil Garthwaite (D-Dickeyville), Mary Hubler (D-Rice Lake), Andy Jorgensen (D-Fort Atkinson), Nick Milroy (D-Superior) and Amy Sue Vruwink (D-Milladore).
Citing “countless expressions of concern from our constituents concerning the negative impacts” of the proposed gross receipts tax on motor fuel sales, the seven noted that local cooperatives’ sharing of net margins with their members “will dramatically decrease or disappear and wages and profits shared with employees and local owners in other fuel supplier businesses will also diminish” if the tax is enacted as proposed.
The seven Democrats said they believed ‘the correct course of action is to avoid imposing a new tax that has as many faults as the oil gross receipts tax proposal does.”
Sending a separate letter to the co-chairs Wednesday was State Rep. Donna Seidel (D-Wausau).
Seidel noted that “Most of [the returned co-op proceeds are] reinvested in the local economy, which is more important now than ever.”
Oemichen, who noted “It’s getting down to the wire in terms of deciding whether this new tax will be part of the final budget bill,” added, “It’s gratifying to realize thousands of people have taken the initiative to communicate with their lawmakers, and that members of the Legislature now clearly understand there will be serious harm to rural communities if this proposal becomes law.”
Cooperative Network serves more than 600 member-cooperatives, owned by more than 6.3 million Wisconsin and Minnesota residents, by providing government relations, education, marketing, and technical services for a wide variety of cooperatives including farm supply, health, dairy marketing, consumer, financial, livestock marketing, telecommunications, electric, housing, insurance, worker-owned cooperatives, and more.
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