The Winona Daily News smells something fishy, and it's not just rising river water.
Nope: the editorial board is looking at Minnesota Republican shenanigans with local government aid (LGA). To the west, the Willmar paper reports on the reaction by the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities to proposals by the legislative majority to scale back or eliminate LGA.
The ever-lively editorial writers at the WDN pull no punches with Our View: Rochester's LGA funding smells fishy. It's not with Rochester itself that the Winona editors take issue, but the Republican legislation favoring the Mayo City--the state's third largest--over Minnesota's other large cities:
Minnesota Republicans: Your colors are showing.
And, ahem, it's not pretty.
...we're beginning to see the GOP go right down its predictable roads.
The latest case in point: the GOP's local government aid targets.
While Greater Minnesota gets support, three of the largest cities in Minnesota get nothing, and there are plans to cut funding from other metro areas.
Except one.
St. Paul gets whacked. Minneapolis gets hit. Duluth is docked.
But not Rochester. . .
Yet, it's also not hard to figure that many of the urban and suburban legislators aren't a member of the political party in power.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Rochester, where Republicans want to keep hold of their political lock.
Instead of pulling LGA funding from the four "first class" Minnesota cities, the GOP leadership in the Legislature decided to give Rochester an exception. . . .
The GOP has taken a tough budget decision and turned it political.
The GOP just can't seem to quit Rochester's allure. But it does so at the literal expense of the taxpayer and other Minnesota cities.
If the GOP is really so principled, it should start by sticking to those principles.
Cut Rochester's LGA, too.
Or is it because there's more to it than that?
Perhaps the GOP will stick to those "principles" and follow one Twin Cities' conservative blogger's recommendation and let Minnesota's small towns become ghost towns--asserted as a historical inevitablility with an ideological certainty worthy of the most doctrinaire Marxist jonesing for a classless and stateless society at the end of time.
However, his vision might be a hard case for the Republican Party of Minnesota to make when also pitching a lazy small-town pastoralism, which asserts that rural Minnesota is somehow superior to the fleshpots of Minneapolis. In truth, our virtues and vices--and shared values--are much the same.
The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities is having none of it, the West Central Tribune in Willmar reports. In Coalition is seeking approval of current LGA level, David Little writes:
The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities is urging the Legislature to retain the 2011 level of local government aid to cities at $527 million, 5 percent less than the amount certified by the state in 2002.
Cities are relying on the state to honor appropriations that local officials used to establish their 2011 budgets, according to a coalition spokesman.
If aid to cities is cut, the reduction would come in the middle of cities’ budget year, force cities to further reduce services and dry up cash flow accounts or engage in short-term borrowing. . . .
The Coalition's lobbyist Tim Flaherty calls out some conservative's candidates' misrepresentation of the reason why LGA was first instituted:
In a Tribune interview, Flaherty said the purpose of local government aid, established in 1971, is to reduce property tax and service disparities among rural, metro and suburban cities. He said some candidates in the 2010 election campaign misconstrued the original purpose, saying it was started to pay for essential services like police and fire protection.
“That’s never been the purpose of local government aid,’’ Flaherty said. He said the program was started to provide tax relief to cities with a lower ability to raise revenue than other cities.
Some cities derive taxes from huge property value created by large manufacturing plants and shopping malls. Other cites don’t have those kinds of tax bases yet still must provide libraries, police, snowplowing and other services, said Flaherty.
“The purpose of local government aid … has been to focus some property tax relief so that we have good services wherever you are in the state at a reasonable tax rate,’’ he said.
“But given that, 65 percent of the LGA program does go to greater Minnesota. That’s because we don’t have the high-valued properties that they have in the metro area. Because of that, more of the money does go to greater Minnesota,’’ he said.
What's more, the coalition members aren't buying the starve-The-Cities approach:
Flaherty said the coalition opposes ending aid for Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth and some suburban cities and will continue to work for a statewide program “because it’s important for its political viability long-term but also because it’s the fair thing to do.’’
Personally, having lived in states like Missouri and Pennsylvania, where the divide between urban and rural is much sharper, I find the values and connections that unite rural and urban Minnesota to be quite strong--and deeply resent those whose politics seek to invent a divide (and I don't think much of the rhetorical abilities of urban liberals who can't see their way out of the Republican framing of the issue). Flaherty (and the more snarky WDN) hit the right note. Fairness is a common Minnesota value.
Photo: Downtown Rochester (the MNGOP Emerald City of Oz?) in 2009.
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