PRAT DOA in Madison

PRAT goes splat. An idea to allow La Crosse county to levy a special tax known as a Premier Resort Area Tax, or PRAT, looks to be DOA in the Wisconsin Legislature. And that is a good thing. La Crosse County voters said yes to the idea of creating the additional half cent sales tax, but that was just an advisory referendum. In order for the plan to advance, the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate would have had to agree. And while there are still a few days remaining in the current legislative session, it appears this bill won’t get so much as a hearing. The idea was to use the money raised by the increased sales tax to raise money to pay for repairing our roads, since the state hasn’t. But the plan was flawed. It wouldn’t just be a tax on tourists. It would have been a tax on many common items people in La Crosse buy. And while the money would go to fix county roads, most of the money raised by the tax would come from people living in the city of La Crosse. It is clear something needs to be done to fix our crumbling roads, but establishing this new tax was not the right way to do it.