In Washington County last week, the County Board approved an additional $771,000 to the project to remodel the sheriff’s dispatch center and a few other offices. This brings the total for the project to $4.9 million.

The reasons for the increase in spending are seemingly reasonable. The biggest reason for the unexpected increase is that the elevator needs to be moved to the outside of the building.

The problem is that most of the project is to be funded with revenues from the county sales tax.

You remember the county sales tax, don’t you? It was created in Washington County several years ago to fund a few very dire and very specific capital projects for the county. Those projects have long since been completed, but the sales tax lives on. The County Board kept the tax alive to fund Cabela’s welfare check, and now uses it as a slush fund to pay for whatever tickles their fancy.

The problem isn’t that the Sheriff’s building project needed more money. The problem is that the County Board was not forced to make a choice based on the priorities of the county because they have a slush fund in the form of the sales tax. The sales tax continues to be levied just waiting for some politician to find an excuse to spend it.

Another "temporary" tax that most of Southeast Wisconsin pays, including Washington County, is the 0.1 percent sales tax to pay for Miller Park. This tax was put into place to fund the building of Miller Park. In theory, it is set to go away in a few years after the ballpark is paid for, but don’t count on it.

Politicians all over Southeast Wisconsin are eyeing the Miller Park tax for their own purposes. As recently as a few weeks ago, Senator Lena Taylor was talking about continuing the tax indefinitely and using the proceeds to support the Milwaukee County Park System. The thought of letting such a rich source of revenue revert to the taxpayers is apparently repulsive to some.

Just last week, Milwaukee Mayor Barrett asked the Legislature to give the municipalities the 9-1-1 fee on cellular phones. This was a fee created a few years ago to fund the systems that would allow 911 dispatch centers to triangulate the location of cell phone users who call 9-1-1 in an emergency. The fee started out at 83 cents a month for every cell phone in the state. It peaked at 91 cents per month in 2006, and is currently at 43 cents per month. The fee is set to expire completely on Nov. 30 of this year.

Mayor Barrett has another idea. He wants the state to give control of the fee to the municipalities for use in funding police and fire departments. His argument is that it makes sense to create a fee that was intended to upgrade 911 technologies to fund the services that respond to 911 calls. Unfortunately, that is not why the fee was created, nor was that the reasoning that was presented to the taxpayers’ representatives in the Legislature when they enacted the fee.

Not only does Mayor Barrett want to keep the fee for his own city’s use, he wants to increase it dramatically. He wants to increase the fee to as much as $1 per month in 2009 and up to $1.50 per month in subsequent years. That represents over a 300 percent increase over its current level.

All three of these cases merely prove Ronald Reagan’s point. Once the people decide to create a new revenue stream for government, there will be those within government who will seek to perpetuate that revenue stream. This is true irrespective of any conditions, limitations, time limits, or any other thresholds that the people may put on that revenue stream. The temptation is too great for politicians to resist.

The only viable solution is very simple. No matter what the reasoning, the taxpayers should avoid creating any new revenue streams for government. If some politician wants to spend money on something, the least that the taxpayers should expect is for that politician to find an existing revenue stream and prioritize accordingly. After all, for every new program worthy of funding, there are at least five existing programs that should have been killed years ago.