Commentary; Posted: 3/12/03

Listen to experience on tax policy

Don Heinzman

Local community and county leaders are faced with a major budget revamp to provide services, thanks to a pending harsh reduction of state aids. They must re-assess what public services are necessary, price out those services and use fewer dollars to provide them. Good programs, many jobs and services for the most needy will fall from the cutting tables.

Governor Tim Pawlentyís proposed budget to deal with a $4.2 billion budget would cut state aids to cities over the next two-year period by $435 million.

Moreover, to prevent capturing revenue by raising the property tax, the governor would keep existing caps on local property tax levies and even allow the voters to reverse a tax increase made by the city councils in 2005.

In other words, the governor would put city government in a straight jacket, reducing aids and the ability to levy local taxes.

Meanwhile, no matter how many protest, the governor persists in keeping his campaign promise not to raise taxes at the state level, a promise he made to secure the Republican Party endorsement last summer. The size of the budget deficit and the realization he now represents all of the people have not swayed him from that campaign promise.

The DFL legislators have been surprisingly slow to respond with a plan of their own, except to say one will be coming.

With cities losing millions of dollars in local government aid and market value homestead credit, officials are being forced to reorder their priorities of public service, and eliminate some, while spending down their operating fund balances.

The public needs to be involved in this whole process of setting public service goals, ranking services needed and finding ways to pay for them. It is the public, after all, who will lose services and pay more.

It is time to listen to a more reasonable and experienced voice on tax policies.

Last week Elmer L. Andersen, former governor and publisher emeritus of these ECM newspapers, spoke out about the significance of a tax. He said, ìWeíve gone overboard in thinking taxes are evil or that government is flagrantly wasteful. Taxes are the way people join hands to get things done. Thatís the tradition of Minnesota.

ìWe wanted to have good services and to put the common good above the individual welfare. We are a state where people have been willing to join hands to pay taxes for public service, a way of life and a culture of caring.î

When asked by St. Paul Pioneer Press Columnist Nick Coleman what message he would give today to the stateís political leaders, Andersen responded:

ìGet back to the traditions of Minnesota as a progressive, thoughtful sensible community of people that addresses issues as they come up in a bipartisan setting and with due regard to economic stabilization and a caring concern for the education of future generations and the ultimate well-being of those less able to compete.î

Let Andersenís thoughts set the tone for a serious discussion of determining necessary services and the willingness to fund them, even if in the end it means joining hands to pay taxes for public service, a way of life and a culture of caring.î

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