Some people believe that the Wisconsin Legislature just doesn’t understand how revenue caps affect Wisconsin schools.
I’m sorry to say, legislators know very well how caps control spending and they’re happy about it.
“In GOP Plays Politics With Property Taxes,” The Capital Times’ Matt Pommer wrote in December 2004:

Republicans sought to recapture the anti-tax banner by imposing tougher spending limits on school districts than the current revenue controls. The unionized teachers had supported Doyle, and toughening the already-in-place spending limits seemed like a nifty political move. Doyle vetoed the tougher spending limits.


At about the same time, the AP reported:

[GOP] State Rep. Frank Lasee, who has authored several versions of the limits, known as TABOR, said Tuesday this draft was crafted to address previous concerns about how best to place strict limits on spending increases across all levels of government and schools. . . .
State spending would be limited to the rate of inflation for the Milwaukee-Racine urban area plus Wisconsin’s population growth.
County and municipal spending would be limited to the same inflation measure plus new construction.
School districts and technical college districts would be limited to the same inflation measure plus annual growth in the student body.
Voters would have to approve a referendum in order to exceed the caps, increase taxes or issue new bonds for many projects.


The legislature has been told again and again about revenue caps. For example, the Wisconsin State Journal carried an article on October 1 with the headline “Cash-strapped school districts will plead case to state.” The article begins:

In a farm country 55 miles northeast of Madison, the Markesan District Schools are caught in a vise.
Enrollment is declining in the Green Lake County area, causing state support for the schools to fall sharply, while costs per pupil of paying the teachers, heating the schools and fueling the school buses keep rising.
If local voters fail to approve a $3 million rescue by next spring, the School Board will be forced to consider dissolving the 200-square-mile school system and parceling its 850 students to other districts, said Sue Alexander, Markesan schools superintendent.
So she’s coming to Madison this week to deliver a blunt message to legislators and a panel studying reforms in the state’s formula for funding schools:
“This is a conservatively, well-managed district . . . and we cannot survive with the way you’ve set this up in the state of Wisconsin. And that’s a shame because this is a terrific little district.”
Alexander will be among at least eight educators from places as scattered as Janesville, Milwaukee and the North Woods testifying Thursday.


In response to concerns about revenue caps:

The Legislative Council panel’s chairman, State Sen. Luther Olsen, a Ripon Republican who also heads the Senate Education Committee, cautions that the panel’s short-term options are limited because the Legislature and taxpayers appear determined to avoid raising taxes during an election year.
Olsen, a former president of the Berlin School Board involved with school finance issues for three decades, said that as he speaks with critics of the funding formula, “it seems like everybody’s fix is, ‘Send us money that somebody else raised.'”


In the end, revenue caps will change only when a Democratic majority takes over the State Assembly and Senate.