The Road To Sprawlville, Chapter XX: Waukesha County's 'Obscene' Grab For State Road Dollars

Sometimes people have no shame, so steeped are they in self-centered denial that their public policies and statements degrade into embarrassing self-parody.

This is the subject of the 20th installment of this blog's occasional series, "The Road To Sprawlville" - - often bumpy, sometimes chaotic or unhappy, and definitely expensive.

In this chapter, we discover that Waukesha County officials, where tax-and-spend is allegedly a political crime, are now stuck in some hypocritical, and self-delivered quicksand.

Let them dig themselves out.

Here is the situation: There is a move to get the long-stalled Waukesha west bypass started and financed.

It's a local road extension to remove local congestion from sprawling western Waukesha - - but the county is balking at the state's generous offer to get the plan finished.

The state has offered to pay - - with your money and more - - 50% of the estimated $50 million tab, or $25 million.

Waukesha County wants the taxpayers of the state and the rest of region to pay a lot more, reports the Journal Sentinel, as the county's final offer is $10 million, or $20% of the total.

A Waukesha County official calls the state's offer "obscene."

You want obscene?

Remember that the state agreed quickly, and in cahoots with Waukesha County, to pick up $23.1 million of the estimated $25 million cost for the I-94 interchange to the Pabst Farm Not-Yet-Built Mall, with Waukesha County only paying 7%, or $1.75 million.

Portions of that interchange planning and decision-making have led to a federal civil rights complaint.

Does Waukesha think it should receive its highway project funding with most of the cost paid by others? Does Waukesha expect that 7% is the norm, and 20% is the max?

What other municipality feels similarly entitled, and would have the gall or lack of awareness to trumpet it?

Also - - Waukesha County has refused to join the Regional Transportation Authority because it fears tax dollars would go to help Milwaukee transit services.

But keep on sending your money out to Waukesha County for frivolous interchanges and highly-subsidized local projects.

Gimme, gimme, gimme.

What chutzpah!.

State transportation dollars come out of a common pot of money collected from motorists in gas tax and licensing revenues.

Road projects come with cost-sharing formulaes.

As I pointed out here - - the state gave the County a break on the I-94 interchange. It could have assigned them a larger share, and in hindsight, should have done just that.

The state's permissiveness and favoritism is coming back unappreciated from an ungrateful County now enabled and emboldened to look for bigger handouts and gaudier state subsidies.

And these payments are supposed to be poured right into the heart of Sprawlville, where development has been encouraged to run amok, but where there has been virtually no transit expansion - - meaning that without a paradigm shift in priorities, western Waukesha will be demanding more millions for more lanes in a few years.

The state should hold its ground.

A 50% state contribution was already enough, maybe too much, and if Waukesha continues to be greedy and whiny and demanding, the state should take that 50% off the table and tell the locals to fix the congestion that is solely their own creation with their own property tax dollars.

Then maybe there'd be some economies and land-use management added to what passes for transportation planning in Sprawlville.