(Note: This column appears in Community Newspapers.)

By Charles Sykes

This is chutzpah on steroids.

In terms of swollen arrogance, Barry Bonds, the soon-to-be bogus home run king, has nothing on the Milwaukee County Board, which voted last week to advance a $120 million a year sales tax increase.

Trust us, they said. It won’t be like last time, really, we’ll use the money for property tax relief, the parks, transit, and police and fire. We won’t fritter it away on increased spending or pilfer it ourselves by padding our pensions and fringe benefits. Honestly.

County Executive Scott Walker isn’t buying it, because he thinks that a tax is a tax is a tax. But the board could well override his veto and put the tax hike on the February ballot.

And here’s where the chutzpah comes in.

Supervisors actually seem to think that voters might trust them with the extra cash. But that would involve one of the largest cases of collective amnesia ever recorded by science.

The last time we looked, after all, some of the same County Board members were caught stuffing millions of tax dollars into their own pockets, voting themselves massive pensions and lavish sick pay benefits.

As it turns out that was only one aspect of the county’s kleptocracy. The Journal Sentinel now reports that the county’s crony network had flouted federal law in allowing bogus pension buy-backs that allowed county employees to pad their taxpayer-funded retirements by counting their summer youth employment. They almost got away with that scam.

As the paper reported: “Cronyism and conflicts of interest have marked the program since 1990. Officials with key oversight roles have benefited and have helped friends or family members get in on the deal.” The pricetage for taxpayers: somewhere between $49 and $52 million, not exactly pocket change.

Now these guys are asking you to trust them with more of your money.

We’ve been here before. In 1991, the last time we had a big county tax increase, county pols promised that the windfall would go for property tax relief, parks and transit. In the next decade property taxes went up, support for the parks dropped, and transit is still a mess.

Instead, the pols spent the money and stole the rest.

For the county board, one good scam is worth another. So have now become like the obnoxious uncle who asks you to pull his finger. The first time you might fall for it to malodorous consequences.

The next time you should know better.