Walker: “We Can’t Afford the Rail We Already Have…and they STILL Want to Build Another Train?”?

Wauwatosa – Scott Walker, Milwaukee County executive and candidate for governor, today continued to rail against the Doyle-Barrett $810 million train from Milwaukee to Madison.  Today it was reported that Governor Doyle has raided another $340,000 from a state transportation fund to bailout the Milwaukee Amtrak building – a building owned by a private company that failed to pay its property taxes.  The money taken to pay for the rail depot was designated for maintenance and operation of the current Amtrak passenger rail service.

 

“It’s ludicrous that at the same time Mayor Barrett and Governor Doyle are forcing taxpayers to spend nearly a billion dollars to build a new high speed rail line, we are yet again reminded that we can’t afford the rail we already have,” said Walker.  “They’re already stealing money for maintenance on the current system to pay the bills for the depot.    What happens when we build more depots as Barrett and Doyle are planning?  Where will we get the money to pay those bills?” 

Walker has been consistently outspoken against the rail project and the untold ongoing costs it will saddle Wisconsin families with.

 

“We can’t afford to fix our crumbling roads and bridges, but we have enough money to bail out a private company with transportation funds?  Wisconsin taxpayers deserve better.  We need smaller government.  We need to focus on maintaining the infrastructure we already have, the roads and bridges that everyone uses, not a new high speed rail line that less than one percent of the Wisconsin population will ever use,” Walker concluded.

 

The full article from today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel below: ??

 

State steps in to pay depot's overdue taxes
Payment of more than $300,000 wards off foreclosure for Amtrak-Greyhound station
By Larry Sandler of the Journal Sentinel
Aug. 9, 2010

 

Just two days before the City of Milwaukee was to foreclose on the downtown Amtrak-Greyhound station, the state stepped in Monday and paid $341,461 in overdue property taxes, interest and penalties, city and state officials said.

 

The state's move prevents the iconic train station from becoming the target of legal action in the middle of a gubernatorial campaign where high-speed rail has emerged as a political issue.

"This was done in the public's interest," said state lawyer Bob Jambois.

 

He said the state plans to seek reimbursement from the company that renovated and manages the station.

 

As a state-owned structure, the depot - officially called the Milwaukee Intermodal Station - ordinarily wouldn't be subject to property taxes. But the building at 433 W. St. Paul Ave. is leased to a private developer, Milwaukee Intermodal Partners, which oversaw the $15.8 million renovation completed in late 2007. Leasing the building for private use makes it taxable, city officials say.

 

Milwaukee Intermodal Partners invested nearly $3 million in the renovation, said Jambois, general counsel for the state Department of Transportation. An additional $6 million came from a city tax incremental financing district, and the remaining $6.8 million came from state and federal funds.

 

The city assessed the station at $5.7 million, which resulted in tax bills of $137,715 for 2008 and $148,866 for 2009. Until this week, however, those bills weren't paid, accumulating interest of $36,587 and penalties of $18,293, according to figures posted on the city treasurer's website.

Because the building is owned by the state, the city treasurer's office mailed tax bills to the state Department of Administration. The lease requires the state to forward those bills to the developer, according to Peter Weissenfluh, the city's chief assessor.

 

Communication problems

 

But Scott Mayer, the former president and still minority shareholder of Milwaukee Intermodal Partners, said the state didn't pass the bills along to the company until they were already overdue. City Attorney Grant Langley said that was an issue between the state and the company, not the city's problem.

 

Jambois said the bills sent to the Administration Department weren't passed along to the DOT, either. For 2010, the city has changed the billing address from an Administration Department post office box in Waukesha to a DOT office in the station.

 

Mayer also says the assessment was too high, not taking economic conditions into account, but the company didn't learn of the assessment until it was too late to appeal. He says city assessors agreed with the company's position by slashing the assessment nearly in half, to $3 million for 2010.

 

"We were not willing to pay an inappropriate amount," Mayer said.

 

Langley said missing the appeal deadline was also a communications issue between the state and the company. Assessment Commissioner Mary Reavey did not return a call seeking comment on the assessment.

 

Jambois said the lease required the company to set money aside in an escrow account to pay property taxes, but the company didn't do that. Jay Wilton, president of Wilton Partners, the Los Angeles-based majority partner in the firm, did not return a call seeking comment.

 

Ordinarily, the city and its collection agency would keep trying to collect unpaid 2008 property taxes throughout 2009 and 2010 and would not file a foreclosure lawsuit until 2011. However, Langley said the city pushed up the timeline and was poised to file suit Wednesday because the collection agency wasn't getting any cooperation from the developer.

 

At that point, Jambois said, he urged state officials to pay the bill to prevent further interest, penalties and legal fees from accumulating.

 

Jambois said the state paid the bill out of funds originally budgeted to support Amtrak's Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha line, which required less state subsidy than projected this year. State officials will now call on the developer to repay that sum, he said, adding, "If they don't pay us back, we will terminate the agreement with them" to manage the station.

 

Milwaukee Ald. Bob Bauman, whose downtown district includes the station, had pressed Langley to file suit and had called for either the city or the state to take over running the station. But Jambois said it was more likely that the state would hire another private operator if it booted Milwaukee Intermodal Partners. Rent from the station's tenants - Amtrak, Greyhound, a restaurant and a vending machine operation - would then be used to repay the money the state laid out for the tax bill, Jambois said.

 

Future plans

 

The station is to be a key hub for the planned $810 million high-speed rail line connecting Milwaukee to Madison, as an extension of the Hiawatha that eventually could serve the Twin Cities. Trains are to start service at 79 mph in 2013 and reach top speeds of 110 mph by 2015.

 

Although the rail plans won bipartisan support when first proposed by then-Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, a Republican, the line became a focus of GOP criticism when Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle sought and won federal stimulus money to cover full construction costs. Republican gubernatorial candidates Scott Walker and Mark Neumann have vowed to shut down construction if elected, leaving Democrats - Doyle and likely Democratic nominee Tom Barrett - to defend the project.

 

Here's what the state paid in overdue property taxes for Milwaukee's downtown Amtrak-Greyhound station:

2008 tax bill: $137,715
2009 tax bill: $148,866
Interest: $36,587
Penalties: $18,293
Total bill: $341,461