The spirit of Jack Abramoff is alive and well in the halls of the Minnesota House. Playing a cynical game of “price is right politics,” House Republicans, with the backing of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, are hoping to post rebate checks to Minnesota property taxpayers just a month before the November general election. The plan would divvy up $307 million in state surplus funds among about 1.5 million Minnesota homeowners.
We don’t argue that there is a real populist pocketbook attraction to the idea of getting a check back from the state. After all, it is — or was — our money, and if the state doesn’t need it, why shouldn’t we get it back? We’d offer no argument there if in fact the state didn’t need it. But the fact that next year, across the state, as reported by the Minnesota Department of Revenue, overall property taxes are going up more than 10 percent tells us that not all of Minnesota is flush with cash. To keep up with the bills, Minnesota school districts increased their local property tax levies by more than 18 percent — even though in 2002 the Legislature supposedly moved school funding away from local property taxes to state sales and income tax revenues. If there’s spare change in the state’s coffers, it’s there because the governor and legislature shifted the onus of raising taxes to cities, counties, townships and school districts and now want to don their superhero capes and swoop in with pennies from St. Paul and a campaign posture as vigilant guardians of the public’s purse.
If the Legislature is serious about property tax relief, use the money to reverse cuts in local government aids and changes in the public school funding formula that forced local governments and school districts to raise property taxes. Instead of playing pre-election politics, the governor and Legislature needs to live up to their responsibilities and provide an equitable revenue structure to pay for the protections and services Minnesotans insist upon.
No doubt, the memory of the “Jesse checks” of years past is sweet, but the memory of last summer’s closed parks, locked freeway restrooms and shutdown state agencies and last fall’s school referendums is a reality check. It doesn’t take degree to see through this like a just-washed window — particularly as it comes (coincidentally?) a week before income taxes come due and well before Minnesota property owners have recovered from the sticker shock received when they opened their spring property tax statements. It’s cash register politics of the most cynical sort.
Minnesota deserves better.
By Jerome Christenson on behalf of the Winona Daily News editorial board, which also includes publisher Rusty Cunningham, editor Darrell Ehrlick, photo editor James A. Bowey and sales and marketing manager Tom Best.
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