Lori Sturdevant, whose measured and sensible Sunday columns emit more light than all the Sabbath gasbags combined, takes up today the topic of local government aid (LGA). Check it out here. The links are interesting, too.
Without LGA, which Minnesota legislators adopted in 1971, cities and towns have only the local property tax with which to raise money for basic local services--police, fire, a municipal library, parks and recreation programs, street crews, snow plowing and the like. Since these services are purchased in the same marketplace, they all get about the same deal, but they do not all have the same resources. Towns with a lot of local tax base can raise all they need, and then some, with a relatively modest levy. Meanwhile, less affluent places find that they must either tax at a higher rate or provide fewer services, or both. Anything they choose makes their town a less desirable place to live and do business, which exerts downward pressure on property values, thereby compounding the problem. The Minnesota legislature, recognizing that the property tax system had the potential to suck the life out of communities across the state, instituted LGA and began distributing, according to complicated formulae, state dollars to local units of government.
You can imagine what today's "conservatives" think about such an arrangement. It's big government taking money from the successful worthy ones and redistributing it to "losers." Government knows best who should have the money! And so, when hard budget times coincided with the administration of Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, LGA was slashed. It's really just a way of demanding sacrifices in hard times from those already suffering the most, and anyway it didn't work: the large deficits persisted, even grew, and now, with Pawlenty gone but the legislature firmly in the hands of Republicans, it appears that LGA is threatened with extinction.
But a funny thing seems to be happening. Many of the places that have benefitted from LGA are in conservative, outstate Minnesota, and their people and mayors, while recognizing the degree to which their survival is connected to state aid, are not accustomed to thinking of themselves as "losers." The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce wants LGA cut further to bring the budget toward balance but many local chambers are urging the governor, a DFLer, to preserve state aid in order that they might continue to provide basic services without hiking their local levies yet again. The Republican response has been to start by cutting off the state's urban centers--Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth--from LGA funds. Of course, it's not the voters in these places that put Republicans into power at the legislature, and it looks like political payback. But, dismissing that charge, one Republican legislator helpfully explains, "I believe so much in that personal responsibility concept and that city officials must be masters of their own fate, as pleasant or unpleasant as it is."
You see how it is. They have forsaken the personal responsibility principle and thus don't have enough tax base to pay for basic government services.
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