DANESHARE
DANESHARE is the proposed revenue sharing of Dane County’s portion of the sales tax (.005) with all municipalities in Dane County.
Since April 1, 1991, Dane County has collected an additional (.005) on top of the state sales tax of (.05). Since that time and according to Dane County’s Department of Administration Controller Division, $897,051,822.02 has been collected as of December 30, 2015. This county sales tax was originally proposed to pay for a new county jail. The jail expenditure has been paid off for years and, since the county’s portion of sales tax was never designated for any other specific purpose, all revenue collected has been deposited into the county’s general revenue fund.
The DANESHARE proposal would allow all towns, villages and cities, within Dane County, to share, on a per-capita basis, 50 percent of each month’s sales tax revenue collected by the county from its (.005) tax rate. This revenue sharing would be disbursed to the towns, villages and cities each month, with an initial six month delay, to allow for sufficient administrative time between the state of Wisconsin’s Department of Revenue and Dane County. For example January receipts would be disbursed in July.
DANESHARE can be enacted in one of three ways. First, Dane County would adopt the
DANESHARE proposal by a vote of the Board of Supervisors and effective as of the beginning of the next annual budget. Second, a majority of Dane County towns, villages and cities, would pass resolutions requesting the Dane County Board place a binding referendum on the November 2016 general election ballot seeking direct voter approval for the DANESHARE proposal. Third, if neither options one and two come to fruition, legislation would be introduced in the Wisconsin state legislature. This legislation would allow a simple majority of municipalities, within a county collecting a sales tax previously established for a minimum of three years and with no specific designation for the funds other than for general revenue purposes, to pass resolutions which would require their county board to place a binding referendum on the next general election ballot asking the voters of the county if the DANESHARE proposal, or revenue sharing of the county’s portion of the sales tax, should be adopted in the manner previously stated. In counties where the sales tax has been previously designated for a specific purpose, municipalities would not be able to request revenue sharing unless the specific designation was eliminates and no new specific purpose is established.
With the enactment of property tax levy limits in the 2011-2013 biennium Wisconsin state budget, local governments have found it ever increasingly difficult to fund infrastructure projects or large capital equipment expenditures. With hundreds of millions of dollars collected by Dane County, since the jail expenditure was eliminated, there has been no commitment, by the Dane County Board of Supervisors, to any new major capital building project(s) or infrastructure program that would justify the continued collecting of the county sales tax. Therefore, DANESHARE allows locally collected taxes to be, in part, returned to their communities where locally elected leaders can designate these funds for local infrastructure projects, capital equipment expenditures or other local projects as their communities determine proper.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Dane county’s population in 2010 was 488,073. If we use $25 million dollars a year from half of Dane County’s sales tax collection as an assumption then each resident of a municipality would bring $51.22 per year back to their municipality. If the Town of Blue Mounds is used as an example, 980 town residents multiplied by $51.22 would bring $50,195.60 back to the town. This would be a 50% increase in the annual road budget for the Town of Blue Mounds in the very first year of DANESHARE!
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