Dane County leaders said they’re committed to letting voters decide whether to adopt a half-cent sales tax for regional transportation improvements — even though Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed a binding referendum on the tax.

But the state senator who pushed for the referendum in the 2009-11 state budget, which Doyle signed Monday, said the veto could limit how much say voters in smaller communities have in the imposition and use of the tax by a county Regional Transit Authority.

State Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Waunakee, also said the binding referendum provision was critical to the RTA being included in the state budget.

“Without the referendum in this I wouldn’t have supported the RTA language and it wouldn’t have been in the budget,” Erpenbach said. “I was real surprised (about the veto), number one, and number two, pretty mad about it. It’s something everyone agreed to.”

Doyle said in a veto message, “I object to state mandated referenda deciding questions on local transit.”

Doyle also vetoed language lawmakers agreed to that would have allowed Dane County to spend up to 25 percent of any sales tax generated by the RTA on roads.

Eileen Bruskewitz, a Dane County supervisor who opposes creation of the transit authority, called the 25 percent road option “a ruse” to help generate support for the tax. She said she believed most of such spending would have been used to create parking lots and road improvements near transit stops.

Doyle’s veto of that language, Bruskewitz said, “keeps (a referendum) even cleaner: Do you want trains or do you not?”
Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk said she’s “very disappointed” by the vetoes but said it’s too early to say how voters might react to the referendum, which would take place in fall 2010 at the earliest, because no formal proposal has been created.

If the county creates an RTA, its first step will be developing a regional transportation plan that could include buses or a commuter train, she said.

“We have 100,000 people driving into Madison daily for work. There is plenty of need for an RTA regardless of roads,” Falk said.

Doyle had originally proposed allowing Dane County and some other communities in the state to create regional transit authorities. By the time the Legislature crafted a final compromise budget, it had added language requiring the binding referendum for Dane County and allowing the authority to spend money on roads.

Doyle’s vetoes were among 81 worth $10 million he announced Monday in signing the $62 billion spending plan for the two years starting Wednesday. It marked the first time since 1977 that the state’s biennial budget was completed on time.
The budget includes more than $2 billion in tax and fee increases and cuts of 6 percent for most state agencies. The budget requires state employees to take 16 furlough days, repeals state employee pay raises of 2 percent and could lead to about 1,400 state employee layoffs.

It increases cigarette taxes by 75 cents a pack and imposes a 75 cent fee on all phone users. Overall, state spending would increase nearly 7 percent, including about $3 million in federal economic stimulus funding, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Doyle said Monday the budget closes a $6.6 billion shortfall while protecting middle-class taxpayers. But Republicans said the budget would lead to lost jobs.

Erpenbach said that during budget negotiations he sought to insure that even small communities are represented on the Dane County RTA board but agreed that small communities could rotate membership on the board annually while making a referendum binding. That would make sure people in the smaller communities would have a say on the tax, he said.
Without a binding referendum in the budget, he might have pushed for more representation on the authority for smaller communities.

Regardless of the veto, Falk, Dane County Board Chairman Scott McDonnell and Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said Monday they would hold a referendum on whether the transit authority could impose the half-cent sales tax and abide by its results.

“We’ll definitely do one,” McDonell said. “It’s more semantics from our point of view, whether it was required or not. ... We’ll obey the referendum.”

McDonell said he hopes the County Board will create an RTA before it takes up the 2010 budget this fall.
Falk said officials plan to refile a grant application for federal transportation funding to help with a regional strategy. The county withdrew its funding application to the Federal Transit Administration because it was likely to be rejected without RTA or another revenue stream to pay for improvements.

McDonell said there is still a question about the train’s initial route.

Transport 2020, the committee that has been studying the rail option, recommended a route between Middleton and Sun Prairie instead of a route between Middleton and the Dane County Regional Airport based on a ridership and cost analysis. But with the possibility that Madison could get an Amtrak station for high-speed rail between Milwaukee and Minneapolis, having a train to connect the airport with Downtown could be critical, McDonell said.

“A major concern a lot of us have is you don’t want to strand Amtrak riders out at the airport,” McDonell said.

A new ridership analysis will need to be done once the Amtrak route is confirmed. There is also some support for a Downtown Amtrak station. McDonell said he plans to hold public hearings on a resolution outlining the county’s expectations for an Amtrak station.

Reporter Matthew DeFour contributed to this story.