THE "DO-NOTHING" LEGISLATURE
Reis, Alvin C.
THE "DO-NOTHING" LEGISLATURE What It Did—How and Why By ALVIN C. REIS (Assemblyman, First District, Dane County, Wisconsin) Hon. Alvin C. Reis, the author of this article on the 1027 session of...
...As a long time foe of Plumgressive tax principles, Mr...
...They purported to wipe out a dozen commissions by name under a pretense of economy, but analysis revealed that no one of these commissions received any appropriation anyway, so where was the economy...
...Not on corporation incomes, but on individual incomes...
...He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and of the Harvard law school...
...He was going to repeal them...
...Several of them voted against the motor vehicle transfer bill and at least two of them voted against the executive budget proposition...
...Two old issues prominent in the 1926 campaign have been emphatically repudiated by the 1927 legislature: Repeal of the Personal Property Tax and so-called Consolidation of State Commissions...
...TWO NEW issues have been given by the 1927 legislature to the 1928 campagn: Wrater Power Control and Public Utility Taxation...
...I do not think that the Anti-Saloon League's "bootlegging" actually had much effect...
...Ingalls is a somewhat belated convert to the doctrine of throwing the tax burden onto incomes...
...The burden would have remained...
...In short, there was no unanimous backing by the governor's men on his proposals...
...The Assembly had shortly before defeated this bill...
...The writer of this article voted FOR the last two named proposals...
...This legislature handed out some nice tax Christmas presents, over the vain and feeble protest of the writer of this article...
...This senate vote, coupled with the vote by which the senate killed the state park bill because of the surtax feature, drew from one editor the rather caustic comment: "When conservation interferes with possible private profits for someone, the mock conservationists sneak to cover...
...He is an authority on co-operation, having done legal organization work for over a hundred of the state's co-operative associations...
...The governor did not even back the personal property tax repeal in the legislature...
...The question before us is not whether there shall be such a monopoly...
...Reis point to a possible union of Democratic and Third Party forces in Wisconsin...
...With that introduction let us view the achievements of the 1927 session...
...The governor threatened a special session if we did not pass the conservation commission reorganization bill, 404S, providing for a six-man commission to be appointed by himself...
...If candidates will show just what work the state must stop doing or just where two people are doing the same work, then we can save money...
...Both houses passed the bill by a large vote—"to end the spoils system...
...The Bugbear—Consolidation HOW MAfcJY thousands of votes did Governor Zimmerman get on the campaign plea that he was going to consolidate state departments and thus save the taxpayers' money...
...Bills destroying both had passed the senate...
...And that means agricultural taxes—and, God knows, they are heavy enough already...
...I fought against every one of the three tax measures I am about to describe, but it was like butting one's head into a stone wall...
...He himself had apparently recognized the folly of his campaign promise...
...We killed it, 71 to 17...
...The alleged consolidation bills were a mock-cry...
...Henry Huber, Stoughton, addressing the senate Thursday morning for the initiative and referendum resolution, likened lobbyists of the Anti-Saloon league to bootleggers in opposing the resolution without having appeared in committee hearings against it...
...It is a movement that imperils democracy and popular institutions...
...Progressives were said to be against the six-man, unpaid commission idea because it allowed Governor Zimmerman to make the appointments, although the very five-man, paid commission proposal that they were fighting for also allowed Gov...
...That we cannot prevent...
...From a champion of tax reduction, this measure was hardly more than another makeshift attempt to shift the tax burden from one part of the taxpayer's anatomy to another...
...Yet on the bill to outlaw this practice and forbid forever this type of political patronage, the governor's outstanding floor leaders split and a majority of them voted AGAINST the bill...
...Lieut...
...This follows the New York idea for which Gov...
...Finally, in conservation, the session by the famous 404S created a six-man conservation commission to take the place of the present organization...
...Important Utility Dills Lost 1928'S OTHER leading issue is reflected in the following from the press: "Bill G33A came up for reconsideration in the Assembly Wednesday...
...Our Governor Zimmerman in his platform even maintained that he was going to repeal the personal property tax when he had consolidated commissions sufficiently to permit this saving in revenue...
...The Assembly had previously killed the bill and Wednesday refused to reconsider its position...
...An unholy alliance between "backsliding progressives" and the Anti-Saloon League...
...It contains some important changes that the manufacturers want—and per-h;.ps should have...
...diagram the points where there is a real duplication in service or any unnecessary service among state departments today...
...This, it is calculated, would have paid back about three-quarters of a million dollars to estates which, it is true, were taxed under a law held unconstitutional by a 6 to 3 decision of the United States Supreme Court, but these estates had legal remedies for getting their money back and did not take them...
...would have been two of the most important measures of real constructive value to be passed at this session...
...Do Nothing...
...This tells the sorry story...
...This was beyond the realm of reason...
...M. L., Jr...
...It was opposed by every labor organization and social welfare group...
...Personal Property Tax—The Joker WISCONSIN'S personal property taxes raise $18,000,000 in revenue annually...
...Three or four other things that he wanted, he did not get...
...On other persons in the community, ( '. course...
...Thirdly is the "big" tax bill—434S...
...And they should have done so...
...But they di-serve 100'i for effort...
...The above two measures...
...I mention that fact merely to rebut the impression circulated that La Follette progressives were deliberately and unitedly embarrassing and hamstringing the governor in all of his wishes...
...Is there any reason why public utilities should not be taxed on their income, just as ordinary corporations and individuals...
...This bill proposed to tax public utilities on the same valuation that they charge rates or issue certificates against...
...So also the Zimmerman men voted almost unanimously against it...
...Program of Conservation ALMOST hysterical, however—and certainly incoherent -was the outburst of a few propagandists against any deviation from the six man, unpaid idea...
...115A—repealing the personal property tax...
...The amendment passed the assembly 56 to 36, and after stubborn resistance reconsideration was refused 54 to 43...
...Last night's paper carried the report of the tax commission that this bill will decrease the amount of bank taxes in 1927 by at least a million dollars...
...Seven out of twelve states having a corporation income tax apply it to public utilities...
...b) A citizens' tax research bureau...
...The forestry resolution passed the assembly 90 to 1, and the water power resolution 91 to 0. Thus the conception current in some quarters that consei'vation was given a factional or partisian swing in the 1927 legislature, seems without foundation...
...They consolidated a few obsolete commissions we had already agreed to abolish in a biil, 79S, approved by the Committee on Obsolete Laws...
...That is simply political ouster...
...Who chloroformed the Initiative and Referendum...
...Try to superimpose $18,000,000 on top of them and your income tax must go up five-fold...
...The Attorney General held that our present bank-stock tax law was constitutional...
...and (c) The creation of budget director in the executive office...
...Where will these taxes go...
...Im- portant as is the waterpower proposition, it is regrettable that it is in a fair way to become a football of radical politics...
...Upon those legislators who voted against reconsideration, there will fall a responsibility in future years when public utilities begin to reap the harvest of their plea for rates and securities' issues based on reproduction value...
...It is just as much of a credit to preserve old laws that are good...
...It received a knockout blow, but it will come back as the great state and even national issue in the immediate future...
...Suffice it to say that the legislature was too sensible to swallow any such campaign poppycock...
...The most illuminating vote by governor's adherents on a Zimmerman pledge was that on bill 600A prohibiting a governor from appointing legislators to office...
...What happened relative to consolidation...
...Consolidation ought to be a dead issue in 1928 unless the man who takes the stump arid yells "consolidation" can prove and...
...Wouldn't we be in a nice boat today if we had repealed them...
...But the senate made the slaughter...
...How could any governor or any legislature ever consolidate THREE million dollars' worth of departments to such an extent as to repeal EIGHTEEN million dollars in taxes...
...Progressives who urged a strong, salaried commission were pictured as anti-conservationists, although the fact is that the progressives introduced practically every specific conservation measure in the session, viz: Forest tax bill, state reforestation bill, forestry committee, water power committee...
...We passed the forest tax bill—459S—which is the first constructive step toward a reforestation policy that the state has taken...
...We killed that, 67 to 14, and killed a substitute amendment, 66 to 17...
...It is r '.'mon rumor that he will veto the large budget bills because the state does not have the money to meet them...
...Admittedly the 1927 legislature did not add on a host of new laws to the statutes...
...Water Power Resolution Killed IN striking contrast to the adoption of the general conservation program, was tha action of the state senate in killing Jt...
...And the Boldt bill (more properly the Interim Committee bill) baldly and patently "abolished" one office after another in the name of consolidation and then turned around and re-created the identical office under another name...
...The assembly stopped it, 58 to 27...
...First was the bank tax bill, 44A, taking the tax off bank stock and putting the tax on bank income...
...Although serving his first term in the Assembly...
...524A—by the same author—repealing the personal property tax and attempting to put the tax on individual incomes...
...For, with the rapid advance of electrical service it will not be very long until every industry, every public utility, every farm and every home will be absolutely dependent upon electrical power...
...Henry Huber today m;.de his second plea for the Reis resolution...
...From the Milwaukee Journal of June 16th...
...Let it be noted, also, that the governor's own men voted almost to a man AGAINST the proposed citizens' tax bureau even though this expedient had been urged by the executive in his message...
...We are approaching the most serious crisis of the present generation...
...Next to a supply of natural resources sufficient to feed, clothe, and shelter our people, this is the greatest of the economic questions which face the human race...
...One or two of the governor's men can be said to have voted for it—and one of "our" crowd (but his button must have slipped...
...All of the La Follette followers voted against it...
...But one of the conservatives—a very earnest and a most competent man—put in the bills (in the progressive assembly...
...And what happened...
...The Governor of Wisconsin—His Program GOVERNOR Zimmerman did not advocate many things...
...Can it be that his proposal was even too radical for the Plumgressives...
...Having lost, they voted for the bill in its original form, which passed 79 to 6. Many progressive farmers opposed the grant ot powers given this new conservation commission...
...The only way to consolidate is to ABOLISH FUNCTIONS: Destroy some of the work that the state is doing...
...This bill accomplishes a seventy-page revision of the income tax law...
...As one editorial said: "Water power is the greatest economic problem of a tangible nature before the American people today...
...Two bills bearing the label of "consolidation" came over from the senate to the assembly...
...It was the Plumgressives who beat his bill, and the most effective arguments against it were made with whip-like effect by the Plumgressive floor-leader...
...We passed the bill and he has made the appointments...
...They figure the people are wet.' "But those same lobbyists did not appear in committee hearings against the resolution...
...This was an express, unequivocal declaration without protest by all who endorsed the platform...
...From 1920 to 1926 he was Assistant-Attorney General of Wisconsin and Counsel for the Wisconsin Department of Markets...
...The governor is already complaining that the treasury is "short...
...We approved a new and effective forest fire prevention plan in bill 93S...
...It is estimated that this tax bill would have produced about a million and three-quarters dollars in revenue...
...The La Follette progressives with one single exception also Toted against both bills...
...Bill 115S repealed the teachers' retirement law...
...It offered the loophole for a legislator to say that he favored the general principle of the I. & R. but he objected to a certain word or clause in the six-page amendment already approved by the 1925 legislature and accordingly would have to vote against it and thus postpone this progressive project for another four years (for it takes four years to get a constitutional amendment through the legislature...
...The Titus bill went down to defeat 74 to 10...
...There is on foot a nation-wide, in fact, a world-wide movement to completely monopolize the power resources of the nation and the world...
...The roll calls by which the Assembly killed reconsideration of these two measures should be preserved carefully by progressives for the future...
...Vocational Age and Teachers' Retirement TWO OTHER strongholds which the 1927 legisiatuie protected may be mentioned...
...Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania, the recognized conservationist, recently said: "No one who studies the electrical developments already achieved and those planned for the immediate future can doubt that a unified electrical monopoly extending into every part of this Nation is inevitable in the very near future...
...Never was there such a protest voiced against any bill in the 1927 session as was aroused by this measure...
...But it went to a humiliating downfall in the assembly, 84 to 3. And they say we did nothing...
...A half dozen progressives—just enough to swing the balance— voted against both of these bills...
...It was probably just such sloppy thinking as this which caused the waterpower resolution to be killed...
...The most far-reaching and intensive monopoly, barring none, is developing throughout the nation in the business of producing and distributing electric power...
...81A, which would have passed the assembly 70 to 13, but met death in the senate 20 to 10...
...Who did it...
...He will be frowned upon by the manufacturers if he refuses to sign...
...Whether this six-man, non-salaried commission will work out better than the five-man, paid commisson for which the progressives fought, is a matter of conjecture...
...18 to 11...
...Governor Zimmerman had announced it an inviolate principle that the chief executive should not exert political wire-pulling by appointing legislators to office...
...How many hundred votes have candidates for state offices in Wisconsin since 1920 raked together on this bugaboo...
...Double-Crossing 1. and B. THE Republican state piatform in 1926 declared: "We favor concurrence by (he next legislature in the constitutional amendment providing for the initiative and referendum as adopted at the last session of the legislature...
...Bills 139S, 255S and 347S, respectively, aimed to give the governor these three things and all three passed the senate...
...Reis distinguished himself as a debater and soon became recognized as the leader of the La Follette Progressives in that body...
...Our individual income taxes amount to only $4,000,000...
...Reis has done great service for the Progressive movement in the session of the Legislature which is just drawing to a close.—R...
...Fred R. Zimmerman, governor of Wisconsin, VETOED IT...
...Arid not before then, all the cheap campaign babble to the contrary notwithstanding...
...The outstanding feature of the present legislature as far as making new law is concerned, is its work in conservation...
...If power is monopolized, the nation is monopolized...
...It was a fictitious, a paper, a mythical consolidation—no consolidation at all...
...But Governor Zimmerman signed the new bill...
...Huber,'who made the heroic battle for the resolution in the senate...
...Calling upon 'backsliding progressives* of the senate to remain loyal to their republican platform pledge by supporting the initiative ajid referendum resolution, Lieut...
...Second was the inheritance tax refund bill, 97A...
...It remained for the assembly to deal with them...
...And so "with a pen made from an eagle's feather, sent to him by Northern Wisconsin Indians," the governor signed bill 404S and it passed into history...
...Just two weeks ago the Assembly also refused to reconsider bill 634A, which aimed to tax public utilities on their income as well as their property and thus place public utilities upon the same basis as ordinary corporations and individuals...
...Wisconsin State Journal of June 16th...
...From The Capital Times, July 15th...
...These are the two concrete contributions of 1927 to' conservation and restoration of our forests...
...Three or four "progressives" not only renounced their platform but repudiated their own votes on the identical resolution in 1925...
...He will have the curse of 200,000 individual income tax payers upon him if he does sign...
...Governor Blaine vetoed this bill once...
...Al" Smith is fighting so strenuously...
...The governor's men with one single exception voted against both bills...
...Wisconsin does not...
...The senate agreed with John Kamper...
...The assembly agreed with John Kamper...
...Does this action on the part of Mr...
...And some legislators said this and did this...
...Petitions by the score were read in the assembly...
...The governor evidently did not realir.e that all our state commissions and departments put together cost only $3,100,000, annually whereas our personal property tax aggregates $18,000,000 annually...
...Governor Zimmerman in his primary campaign wanted us to repeal them...
...This Zimmerman assertion was, to be sure, a bit wishy-washy...
...A very entertaining, but not quite rational, slant was given to the waterpower resolution by the Wisconsin Statesman of June 30th, when it said: "Assemblyman Alvin C. Ries, of Madison, has introduced a resolution in the Assembly to amend the state constitution so as to allow the strxte of Wisconsin to take over and operate waterpow-ers within the borders of this commonwealth...
...Bill 48S lowered the vocational age for children...
...So instead, they have been like so many bootleggers in their methods to make votes against it...
...But on these two issues some of our own "flesh and blood" turned...
...Too many hard-headed farmers knew that taking taxes off of personal property meant simply throwing taxes onto the land...
...La Follette's Magazine in an issue not so very far back contains the following paragraph in an article on "The Peril of the Power Monopoly...
...Is there any reason why public utilities should not be taxed on their reproduction value if they use that value for rate-making...
...The Primary BILL 279A threatened an inroad into that fundamental progressive doctrine: The direct primary...
...It got through the senate...
...Like the railroad fight of the old La Follette, these measures will be fought over again and again until they do finally become law or their proponents are forever vanquished...
...As Pennsylvania and the Nation deal with electric power so shall we and our descendants be free men, masters of our own destinies and our own souls, or we shall be the helpless servants of the most widespread, far-reaching, and penetrating monopoly ever known...
...Either we must control electric power, or its masters and owners will control us...
...But word now comes that Governor Zimmerman vetoed this bill...
...This bill would have increased individual income taxes 500...
...Figure it out for yourseli...
...The one thing that he insisted on most, he got...
...Read the answer in two press clippings quoting Lieut Gov...
...But the bill RAISES the income tax of the average individual taxpayer all the way from FIFTY-FIVE to ONE HUNDRED TWENTY per cent...
...The Boldt bill was defeated 75 to 15...
...The following is a table showing the amount of income tax that the ordinary married man with three children pays today and the amount that he will have to pay under the bill...
...It did not get far, however...
...He was a major in the Army during the war and saw action in France...
...This old time La Follette tiller of the soil had come to the conclusion that it was wrong for a governor to have the arbitrary power to chop off the heads of state officials at pleasure and make them vassals to his whim...
...We Held Our Lines IT IS a credit to enact new laws that are good...
...Taxation of public utilities on their incomes, and holding public utilities to be a reproduction value for taxation if they assert that value for rate making or issuing stocks and bonds—these two principles will constitute leading economic issues before Wisconsin in coming years...
...The governor asked for (a) Transfer of all motor vehicle functions to a new department...
...Where in the world would the state of Wisconsin be today if we had adopted the governor's one prominent campaign plank of repealing EIGHTEEN MILLION DOLLARS in personal property taxes...
...This opinion came just two hours after the final vote was taken in the assembly...
...From one of the dailies commonly called "stalwart" came this comment the morning after: "Another tax-tinkering attempt went awry yesterday when the assembly by a decisive, vote rejected Assemblyman Ingalls' measure to do away With all personal property taxes and substitute for them higher income tax schedules...
...It went down— 53 to 32—progressives, most Zimmerman men, and one outstanding "conservative" against it...
...The lobbyists of the Anti-Saloon league are afraid that under the proposed constitutional amendment the people might initiate laws on prohibition.' he said...
...The question is whether we shall regulate it or whether it shall regulate us...
...The vote was a clear-cut demonstration that the forces of re-action are not yet able to destroy the fundamental principles of government which were laid down in this state by Robert M. La Follette...
...You can not save money by throwing out a group of employes in one office and then turning over the same duties to a new office and appointing the same number of new employes again...
...The senate had passed the bill...
...Unanimity was accorded the creation of these committees...
...It has raised itself...
...They are not dead, however...
...I do not raise it...
...Taxation—The "Do-Nothing Legislature" THIS legislature did nothing...
...The chairman of the committee on Education received as many as three hundred letters a day...
...All three were beaten in the assembly...
...But the session did repel the bitter onslaughts at some of our present laws for which Wisconsin has struggled for years to gain and to hold...
...The control of electric power means the control of the entire industrial life of the people...
...It is a hard one for him...
...Their reaction is shown by the Equity News of June 1, when it describes the vast power of the new commission by saying: "The depths of Mother Earth and the sky ;s their limit," Indeed, so extensive are the powers given the new commission that the Attorney General by official opinion of July 13, held the bill in part unconstitutional as a delegation of legislative power...
...Subsequently, interim appropriations of $10,000 each were given these committees...
...Even the Zimmerman minority platform stated': "Through the initiative and referendum the people should be given an opportunity to voice their opinions on such important public questions as they may initiate, or which the legislature may refer to them...
...Last scene of all that ends this strange eventful history"—John Kamper, progressive farmer, introduced a bill prohibiting the governor from removing state appointees except for cause...
...4A and 5A, respectively...
...Alvin C. Reis, the author of this article on the 1027 session of the Wisconsin legislature, was born in Indiana in 1892...
...What kind of CONSOLIDATION was that...
...The Capital Times paid this tribute: "By the overwhelming vote of 53 to 32 the Ingalls bill which would destroy the primary law and return to the old caucus and convention system was defeated in the assembly...
...Did I say killed...
...The progressives lost by the narrow margin of seven votes in their struggle for a paid commission with somewhat modified powers...
...Net Income Tax Under Tax Under Percentages of Taxpayer Present Law New Bill of increase $2,500 * 3.50 3,000 5.00 11.00 120% 3,500 10.00 18.50 85 4.000 16.25 28.50 75 4,500 22.50 38.50 71 5,000 30.00 48.50 62 6,000 . 46.25 73.50 59 7,000 65.00 103.50 58 8.000 90.00 138.50 55 Governor Zimmerman has not yet signed this bill nor has he yet vetoed it (at the date of this writing...
...Early in the session special legislative committees on forestry and water power were created by Jt...
...Zimmerman to make all appointments...
Vol. 19 • August 1927 • No. 8
