First of all, I'm a Wisconsin resident and voter. Gov. Doyle , who proposed this tax, entered office two years ago with the state on the verge of bankrupcy, and one of his top priorities since then has been trying to make the state solvent again, and has developed several innovative, though controversial, plans for doing so.

The state's financial problems have trickled down to the municipal level -- one of the ways the previous governor tried to fix the state's budget was to cut most state funding to county and municipal governments, leaving many counties and cities with 15% or 20% cuts in their funding.

My mother, as it happens, is a county employee. Several of the employees in her department have recently been let go, and her department is about half the size it was four years ago. Consequently, she is forced to do roughly twice the work she used to do, while simultaneously receiving a pay cut and being forcibly laid off for a week. This, after 30 years of devoted service to the county. This could all be solved by a tax increase, even a relatively minor one, but our county executive refuses to raise taxes, even the slightest (of course, she was all in favor of increasing the sales tax to pay for Lambeau Field renovations).

While I agree that sometime we need smarter spending in government, there are also times when we may need to increase taxes. Our county services have deteriorated noticeably over the past few years (imagine going to your local library, only to discover that it's closed because the entire staff was laid off for the week). I'm more than willing to pay a few more bucks to the government if it means that (1) the government won't completely shit on their employees, and (2) it means we get better services.