Senate clears way for tax money for cheese plant

Madison — In the Wisconsin Senate's first session after inauguration, lawmakers cleared the way for taxpayer incentives for a Sheboygan-area cheese plant.

The Senate unanimously approved a bill to allow the Village of Oostburg to assist Plymouth-based Masters Gallery Foods in building a $30 million cheese packaging and distribution plant in the village. The measure now goes to the Assembly.

Senate Bill 1 would allow the village in Sheboygan County to go over its existing tax financing limits and contribute $2.7 million for the 150,000-square-foot facility expected to create 120 jobs over three years. Sen. Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said the jobs would pay between $18 and $22 an hour.

"It's a good family company that pays family supporting wages," said LeMahieu, the bill's lead sponsor.

The tax financing program serves as a subsidy to developers in which the city takes out loans, uses the loans to pay some portion of the costs of a development and then uses the taxes on that development to pay off the loan. This is known as tax incremental financing and can make possible a development that might not have been built as large or potentially at all.

There are limits as to how much of a local government's property tax base can be tied up in this financing program, and Oostburg wants to raise its limit from 12% of its total property base to 15%.

In addition, senators approved on a vote of 21-12 changes to the rules that will govern their work for the next two years.

As part of those rule changes, the senators will vote on whether to remove from their rules the requirement that committee chairmen who want to take testimony from the public make sure to "schedule the hearing as early as practicable." The revised rules would drop that requirement, which Senate aides said was difficult to enforce.

Republican senators voted down several amendments to the rules by Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) that sought increased reporting on the costs and effects of bills containing new criminal penalties.

Senators also voted down a Taylor amendment that would have allowed more computers on the Senate floor.  Smartphones are allowed on the Senate floor but not laptops.