Milwaukee Magazine Editor Bruce Murphy on Gov. Scott Waukesha's budget and its impact on the city of Milwaukee:
You could go back half a century and you wouldn’t find a more destructive budget for Milwaukee. The combined impact of Walker’s various proposals could destroy Milwaukee Public Schools and replace the system with the most poorly funded system of education in the state, meaning Wisconsin would spend the least on the poorest, most academically handicapped students...
The only certain result of ending residency for teachers, police and firefighters, as Republicans have proposed, is to encourage an exodus of middle-class taxpayers from Milwaukee...
A few other ways the Walker budget punishes Milwaukee and urban areas: It increases highway funding while cutting funding for local roads by 10 percent while barring any increases in property taxes to make up the difference. Expect a big increase in potholes. It ends state funding for recycling but still requires residents to recycle, adding a new unfunded mandate. It slashes the earned income tax credit, meaning the working poor will be left all the poorer, and more of the working poor are in cities. (So much for encouraging poor people to work.)
And that doesn’t even begin to address cuts in state funding for state-mandated programs that are locally administered by Milwaukee County. This budget is a disaster for the state’s biggest city.
That's the abbreviated version of Murphy's piece. You can read it all here.