Miller Park Taxation Is Tommy Thompson Legacy Material

The five-county Miller Park sales tax collection is a recession victim, thus is going to last some years longer than first planned, says the Journal Sentinel.

So let's remember that it was then-Governor Tommy Thompson, "Tommy the Taxer" as Bruce Murphy labeled him long ago, that was the person most responsible not only for the sales tax add-on, but the shares he assigned City and County of Milwaukee local budgets of $18 million each.

Details on this site.

And since Milwaukee city residents and property taxpayers made up roughly half the county tax base, you can fairly say that city residents got hit with $27 million on top of whatever we buy in the five-county sales tax district, plus another big piece of a separate $36 million state infrastructure dollop that Republican tax-and-spender Tommy threw in, too.

We keep hearing that Tommy, chafing somewhere out of the limelight, and not content to keep hauling in fees and compensation from his legal practice and multiple corporate board directorships, is really really really really this close to seriously considering some deep thinking about possibly running for the US Senate against incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold.

I'm still doubting that Tommy's vanity will allow him to set aside the big-dollar income he couldn't go after when he was serving as Governor- - remember during his weird little run-to-nowhere campaign for President in 2008 when he blathered about Jews' inherent facility with money-making? - - to run around Wisconsin campaigning for at least a six-year hitch in DC.

But if he does, he's going to hear an earful in places like Racine and Waukesha and elsewhere where people remember that he stuck it to them as if they were Milwaukee.