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Hegberg feels the heat over county sales tax option |
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Wednesday, 26 March 2008 |
Cliff Buchan
News Editor
Dennis Hegberg is a Republican, but a Republican who could support a quarter-cent sales tax in Washington County to support transit needs.
Hegberg is now starting to know how the six Republicans in the Minnesota House felt after they voted to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of the transportation funding bill this winter. It was the bill that set in motion a plan that asks each of the seven metro area counties to approve or reject the .25 percent sales tax and an increase in the vehicle excise tax.
As the District 1 commissioner representing the Forest Lake area on the Washington County Board, Hegberg two weeks indicated his support for the proposal, saying it was a means to acquire the funds needed to develop transit and busway programs that are needed in the county.
But it was a statement that opened Hegberg to a small avalanche of electronic mail and some face-to-face lectures with party members.
“It’s an organized effort,” Hegberg said of the e-mail blitz that he has received. “I understand where they are coming from.”
The quarter-cent sales tax is projected to raise $5 million in its first year of operation, he said this week. It is money that is badly needed to support transit programs, such as the popular Forest Lake to Minneapolis weekend bus service operated by the Metro Council. It has funded through the end of the year, but beyond that, its future is uncertain, Hegberg says.
In February, according to Met Council data, the service has been transporting more than 300 people a day to downtown Minneapolis and back.
So far, Hegberg says, has received about 300 e-mails, with half coming from residents of his commission district. Nearly all are opposed to the county sales tax, he said.
For most, the opposition is aimed at rail transit programs. That is something that has only long-range implication on the Forest Lake area, he says.
“They don’t mention the buses,” he adds. “Their information is not correct.”
Along with Minneapolis, Hegberg says the revenue from the .25 percent sales tax would likely provide the funds needed by the county to get the Rush Line bus service to St. Paul going.
Without that revenue source, the county will have two options. Drop the Minneapolis service and delay the St. Paul service or find the funds from property tax dollars, something Hegberg says he would not like to see happen.
Budget large now
Getting away from property taxes as a vehicle to fund roads has long been a goal for Hegberg, he says.
In the current budget, Hegberg says the county has just over $5 million for ongoing county improvements in its roads, not counting general maintenance and upkeep.
Through its bonding program two years ago, the county levied $12 million against property taxes for road improvements in Forest Lake (CR-2-W. Broadway Ave.) Those dollars went to Hugo and Woodbury after plans for work in Forest Lake in 2007 and 2008 fell apart.
Hegberg says another $12 million bond for the Forest Lake projects, paid for by property taxes, will be included in the 2010 bonding plan at the county level.
The strong ridership on the Minneapolis bus route is reducing the subsidy rates. What many anti-tax people forget, he says, is that bonding bills are financing packages that have to be repaid.
“They have to be paid back,” he says. “We’re not county property tax dollars for roads as subsidies, but we should.”
Hegberg, the county board chair, said the sales tax issue would be reviewed at the county board level this week and brought back for more discussion and a possible vote on Tuesday, April 1.
After the barrage of opposition, Hegberg said he remains hopeful the matter will be approved, but is not at all sure. “I’m a little less hopeful than I was two weeks ago,” he said.
While opposition here is heavily opposed, it is not so in all areas of the county. “It’s primarily Woodbury that supports the tax,” he said.
With its large increase in housing and commercial projects, transit needs there are growing. That is the area now served Dick Stafford, the commissioner appointed as a caretaker to fill the seat after Greg Orth’s death.
A possible option, Hegberg says, is to delay a decision on the sales tax until the new county board is seated next January. Hegberg and Stillwater Commissioner Gary Kriesel are both up for election and the remaining two years of the Orth term will also be on the ballot in November.
Political fallout
Although the county commissioner seat does not carry a political designation, Hegberg said his stand on the sales tax matter may have had a political backlash.
At the Senate District 52 convention on March 15, Hegberg failed to win election as a delegate to the congressional district and state conventions.
That seems odd, he says, as it ended a string of five congressional conventions where he was seated as a delegate. But not this year.
Hegberg said he also received verbal challenges from some of the party faithful that they would run for the county board seat if Hegberg voted for the sales tax option.
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