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GOP Priorities set: handouts to wealthy people and corporations first, handouts to wealthy people and corporations second, jobs last [UPDATED]

April 30, 2012 by seanolsen 17 Comments

State Senator Julianne Ortman has laid down the law:

Let me be very clear: Before we even consider a vote on a Stadium to benefit one business enterprise, we must secure permanent tax relief for ALL Minnesota businesses and property tax payers.

So what’s in Ortman’s tax bill that is so critical?

$299 million in tax cuts that largely go to the wealthy and corporations over the next three years ($104 million in 2012, and the rest over 2013-14).  The major provision is a phasing out of the state property tax on commercial and seasonal recreational property — a total of $173 million.

The 2012 cuts are paid in the Senate bill for by transferring $104 million out of reserves (on top of the $416 million that the Senate has already offered to transfer out of reserves to pay back part of the K-12 school shift).  There is no payback plan specified for the next budget cycle, so the $195 million will be added on to the existing $1.1 billion deficit.  The House version of these tax cuts finances them on the backs of renters, by slashing the tax credit low- to middle-class renters receive every year.

To summarize:  in order to give tax cuts to wealthy Minnesotans and corporations, legislative Republicans are either  going to drain reserves this year and add to the deficit in the next budgeting cycle OR raise taxes on working families.  That doesn’t sound like a good deal to me.

And only if they’re allowed to accomplish that — and if they get Governor Dayton to cave to their demands for an obscenely small bonding bill — will they move on and give the stadium bill a vote on the floor of both the House and Senate.  There’s one word that describes the performance of the Republican majorities this session:  failure.  It’s time for some new voices in St. Paul.

[UPDATE]:  The conference committee report detailing the final bill agreed to by members of the House and Senate Tax Committees was released last night.  The revised bill is less bad than the original bills that passed both houses.  The total tax cut over the next three years has been reduced to $189 million, $48 million in 2012 and the remaining $141 million in the next biennium.   Instead of phasing out property taxes paid by businesses and cabin owners, the bill instead freezes the amount of taxes paid from these classes of property (today, the total take is indexed to the rate of inflation).  The cost of this proposal is $82 million over the next three years.

However, the revised bill still does not include any long-term financing mechanism.  The $48 million cost for 2012 will be financed from budget reserves and a Revenue Department fund transfer, while the $141 million in the next biennium will be tacked onto the existing $1.1 billion deficit.

2012 Election, Legislative Watch, State, State Legislature, Taxes
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Carver County GOPer loves recycling — at least when it comes to discredited talking points

April 26, 2012 by seanolsen 16 Comments

Earth Day may have been a few days ago, but Carver County Republican Secretary Vince Beaudette shows us his fidelity to Mother Earth in this week’s Chaska Herald by recycling long-since discredited talking points in relation to the 2008 U.S. Senate election between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.  Let’s look at a couple of the gems in Beaudette’s letter:

The Minneapolis director of elections said 32 absentee ballots were found in an election worker’s car a day or two after the election, and all votes happened to go to Al Franken.

This is one of the long-lasting myths of the 2008 election, but it’s just not true.  Here’s a summary of what happened with those 32 ballots gleaned from accounts in MinnPost and the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

  • Minnesota law requires absentee ballots to counted at the precinct place the voter would have normally voted at if they were able to vote in-person on Election Day.
  • Absentee ballots for Minneapolis are returned not to city officials, but county officials.  On Election Night, a batch of overseas ballots came in late, and were only delivered from Hennepin County officials to Minneapolis officials at 7 p.m., one hour before the polls closed.
  • Minneapolis had 13 certified precinct support judges who were responsible for delivering the absentee ballots to the 131 individual precinct locations in the city.
  • Because of the late arrival of this last batch of absentee ballots, 28 ballots were not able to be delivered to the precincts before the polls had closed and the vote-counting process had began.  No additional absentee ballots can be introduced at the precinct once that has happened.
  • Those 28 ballots, as well as four absentee ballots that were erroneously not opened and counted at the precinct level that night were returned to City Hall that evening, where they were securely stored until they could be counted in the presence of a judge and attorneys from both the Franken and Coleman campaigns.  Ballots were never found or stored in cars for days, as Beaudette alleges.
  • Of the 32 votes, 17 went to Franken and 8 to Coleman.  The other seven ballots were for third-party candidates or had no vote for the Senate race at all.

Here’s another classic:

Precincts in Two Harbors and Partridge Township sent Al Franken a net gain of another 350 votes, claiming miscounts, in the days immediately following the election.

Miscounts in elections are actually fairly common.  In 2006, an election won by Amy Klobuchar by a double-digit margin, her vote total changed by over 2,000 votes from the initial canvass to the final results.

Here’s an example of how this occurs, from the Pioneer Press story:

Like many stories that emerged during the recount, the Pine County error became something nefarious through the prism of the campaign and the national media. But it has an innocent explanation, one that the secretary of state’s office spelled out for callers.

Similar to Buhl, Pine County results must be written down, read over the phone and then typed in. Terry Lovgren, a county worker of 23 years, thinks she made the error.

Lovgren’s Election Day was fairly typical — hectic and stressful. She started around 8 a.m. and spent much of the day driving late-arriving absentee ballots to polling places in the farthest reaches of the county.

In the evening, she and Auditor Cathy Clemmer manned a computer, typing in the results from handwritten forms from 47 precincts that were piling up on her desk.

“We just start ripping and entering,” Lovgren said.

In rural Partridge Township, Coleman got 143 votes, edging out Franken’s 129 votes. That’s what the machine tape read at the end of the night and what was written on a ledger that was hand-delivered to the county offices in Pine City.

But that’s not what was typed into the county’s computer and transmitted to the state. Those figures showed Franken with a mere 29 votes.

The numbers sat there until the county canvass the Thursday after the election. Lovgren was taking notes while someone read results.

“Nope, that’s wrong,” someone piped up when Partridge Township was read.

“I felt ill,” Lovgren said. “I was sick that I had made that mistake.”

Nothing nefarious here, just a human mistake that was caught and corrected by the processes in place already.  In a close election, such mistakes are magnified and blown out of proportion by partisans looking to score political points.

The worst part about these consistent attempts by Beaudette (and others) to recycle these stories is that they know by now that these stories are false.  Yet they keep repeating them.

The question is:  why do Beaudette and those of his ilk feel they can’t make the case for voter ID legislation based on the facts?  Why do they have to keep repeating these lies?

State, State Legislature, U.S. Senate
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Sen. Julianne Ortman

Ortman’s Senate Tax Committee looking to get in on Vikings stadium bill [UPDATED]

April 25, 2012 by seanolsen 4 Comments

State Senator Julianne Ortman has requested that the Senate Tax Committee (of which Ortman is the Chair) review the Minnesota Vikings stadium bill.  The bill is currently being heard in the Senate Finance Committee, which was thought to have been the bill’s last stop before going to the full Senate for a vote.

The Senate Tax Committee is considered to have a strong anti-stadium tilt, so a hearing in the committee could stop the bill in its tracks.  Ortman herself is frequently listed as a likely stadium opponent, given her “no” vote on Target Field and past public statements expressing “neutrality” and some skepticism on this issue.

[UPDATE]:  State Senator Claire Robling, the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, indicated in today’s hearing that their committee will be forwarding the bill to Ortman’s Tax Committee instead of the floor of the Senate.

Legislative Watch, State, State Legislature, Taxes
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Ortman gets a second GOP challenger [UPDATED]

April 24, 2012 by seanolsen 0 Comments

The Republican endorsement race for State Senate in District 47 looks to be heating up with the apparent entry of Bruce Schwichtenberg into the race.  Schwichtenberg, who has previously run (and lost) twice for Carver County Commissioner against Jim Ische, joins Kevin Masrud in challenging incumbent State Senator Julianne Ortman for the GOP nomination.  A letter from Schwichtenberg announcing his candidacy can be found below:

[Thanks to the tipster who gave me a copy of the letter!]

[UPDATE]:  Schwichtenberg has a website now.

2012 Election, Legislative Watch, State, State Legislature
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Chaska Area News and Notes: April 23, 2012

April 23, 2012 by seanolsen 0 Comments

Assorted news and observations from the last few days:

  • I finally got down to Patron Mexican Restaurant over the weekend, and I highly recommend it!  Good food and fairly priced.  Service was a touch slow, but I was willing to live with it because it was nice to see a downtown Chaska restaurant that was busy.  Check out their Facebook page for more information.
  • Chaska Middle School West math teacher Michelle Schnaare was named District 112′s Teacher of the Year on Saturday night.  Schnaare receives a $3,000 grant to use on a classroom project of her design.  Congratulations to her and the other finalists:  Chris Commers (Chaska High School, Social Studies), Sara Falkofske (Chanhassen High School, Science), Marie Foster (Chaska Elementary, 4th grade) and Angie Kissock (Chanhassen High,  Physical Fitness).
  • I attended the first annual Pride of Chaska BBQ Bash on Friday night benefiting Chaska High School.  A great event that raised about $50,000 towards building a competition-caliber softball field at the school as well as acquiring a marimba for the music program.
  • After a series of neighborhood meetings, the plan for Griep Park is being finalized and will be reviewed by the Chaska Park Board at next month’s meeting, which will be on Monday, May 14 at 7 p.m. at the Chaska Community Center.
  • Supporters of Ron Paul for President have been very successful in getting their delegates through to the upper levels of the Republican caucus process.  Over the weekend, it was reported that Paul supporters earned 20 of the 24 Congressional District delegate spots, despite finishing a distant second to Rick Santorum in the non-binding vote at the precinct caucuses in February.  This is not going over well in some quarters of the party.
2012 Election, Chaska, Downtown Issues, Economy, Park Board, Restaurants
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ernie

Leidiger “authors” ALEC right-to-work constitutional amendment

April 23, 2012 by seanolsen 1 Comment

If we know one thing about Rep. Ernie Leidiger, it’s that he’s always looking for his own special ways to squeeze more efficiency out of state government.  We’ve talked in the past about his support of misguided policies like the 15/15 proposal.  Well, he’s found a way to bring that ethos to his own job as a state legislator.  Last week, Leidiger (and several other legislators) were listed as authors on H.F. 3009, a new version of a constitutional amendment to institute the so-called “right to work” regulations in Minnesota workplaces.

Leidiger and his co-horts have lived up to their own proposals by outsourcing the work of actually, you know, writing legislation — instead doing a copy-and-paste job from model legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  This isn’t exactly a novel approach from the Republican caucus, though.  Some analyses show over 60 bills share the same “copy-and-paste” method.

Let’s look at one section from the two bills and see just how much this holds true:

H.F. 3009 text:

Section 1. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROPOSED.
1.6 An amendment to the Minnesota Constitution is proposed to the people. If the
1.7 amendment is adopted, a section shall be added to article I, to read:
1.8 Sec. 18. (a) No person shall be required as a condition of obtaining or continuing
1.9 employment to: (1) resign or refrain from membership in, voluntary affiliation with, or
1.10 voluntary financial support of a labor organization; (2) become or remain a member of a
1.11 labor organization; (3) pay any dues, fees, assessments, or other charges of any kind or
1.12 amount, or provide anything else of value, to a labor organization; or (4) pay to any charity
1.13 or other third party an amount equivalent to, or a portion of, dues, fees, assessments,
1.14 or other charges required of members of a labor organization.

ALEC Bill:

Section 4. {Freedom of choice guaranteed, discrimination prohibited.} No
person shall be required, as a condition of employment or continuation of employment:
(A) to resign or refrain from voluntary membership in, voluntary affiliation with, or
voluntary financial support of a labor organization;
(B) to become or remain a member of a labor organization;
(C) to pay any dues, fees, assessments, or other charges of any kind or amount to a labor
organization;
(D) to pay to any charity or other third party, in lieu of such payments, any amount
equivalent to or a pro-rata portion of dues, fees, assessments, or other charges regularly
required of members of a labor organization;

This wording is almost exact.  You can review the other sections of the bill and find the rest of the amendment is built similarly.

Which leads me to my next thought — instead of electing individual Republican legislators, we can subcontract with ALEC to have one person that can write all the bills and press the voting button for everyone in the caucus.  The salary and per diem savings will be significant, don’t you think?

Legislative Watch, State, State Legislature
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Ortman requests review of family court cases

April 18, 2012 by seanolsen 1 Comment

The Chaska Herald reports that State Senator Julianne Ortman has requested an independent review of family court cases, processes and procedures in the First Judicial District, which Carver County is a part of.

Over recent months, the Lea Banken case has received significant media attention.  Banken is involved in a custody dispute with her ex-husband Jeremy.  Disputing the decisions made by Judge Richard Perkins, Banken has taken to the internet and started the site carvercountycorruption.com to document the proceedings in the case.  The blog in itself has become an issue in the case, as the version of the site hosted here at wordpress.com has been effectively shut down.

The Banken case is just one of several cases that have gone through the Carver County family courts that have raised eyebrows among observers across the ideological spectrum.  Ortman’s request, which is also supported by Carver County State Representatives Joe Hoppe and Ernie Leidiger is a useful step in ensuring public trust in the county’s courts.

The text of Ortman’s letter is available on Banken’s blog.

Carver County, Legislative Watch, State, State Legislature
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bowl-view-int-cp

The Legislature and the Vikings: finger-pointing into the void

April 17, 2012 by seanolsen 4 Comments

Last night, the House Government Operations and Elections committee voted down the current Minnesota Vikings stadium proposal by a 9-6 count, effectively ending the stadium discussion for this session.  Five of nine GOP reps voted yes, while one of six DFL reps voted yes on the proposal.

After the failure of the bill, an epic finger-pointing match broke out on Twitter.  Check it out if you care.  Here are a couple of tweets that get to the core of the dispute:

 

You can see where this is leading.  If only folks at the legislature could gin up this sort of energy to work on our crumbling transportation infrastructure or any number of other problems that have gone unaddressed…  But I digress.

I’m not going to pass judgment on the stadium bill itself.  Like most stadium proposals, reasonable people from either side of the aisle can look at it and find reasons to support it or reasons to oppose it.  What’s not acceptable is not finding a way to bring this never-ending saga to a conclusion once and for all.

It’s time for politicians to stop trying to have it both ways.  Too many legislators claim to support the Vikings, but always find reasons to vote against a bill for this reason or that.  Yet many of these same legislators have no new ideas for financing the facility.

This bill has its warts, but it’s the only bill will any substantial level of legislative support.  It’s time for them to vote — on the record — on the floors of the Minnesota House and the Minnesota Senate.  Vote Yes or Vote No.  Let the chips fall where they may.

As a little kid who ran around the backyard wearing a Fran Tarkenton jersey, it’s hard for me to come to grips with the notion that the Vikings may leave the state.  But the team — like it or not — has done what it was asked to do.  It went out and got a local partner (Ramsey County), only to have the Legislature reject that funding package.  The team then worked with Governor Mark Dayton, Minneapolis city officials, and legislators to develop the current package, which includes a comparable team contribution to previous stadium deals.  They deserve an up-or-down vote.  And if the answer is “no”, then they should be free to to pursue options that include moving the team.

Finger-point if you will, legislative Republicans and Democrats.  Blame each other from here through November and beyond.  But if the team leaves, know that the fingers that really will be pointing will be our fingers at you.

2012 Election, Economy, Legislative Watch, State, State Legislature
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Rep. Joe Hoppe

The Stretch Run: looking at education bills in the Legislature

April 16, 2012 by seanolsen 4 Comments

The Minnesota State Legislature returned today from Easter break.  Legislative leaders have promised a quick to end to a session that has thus far produced very little legislation — other than a Voter ID constitutional amendment — lots of stadium talk that has gone nowhere, and more than the usual amount of partisan hijinks.

One of the policy areas, though, where there have been some substantive actions so far in this session has been in K-12 education.  Let’s take a look at some of the important legislation in education, and what the last couple of weeks of the session may mean.

Repayment of the K-12 funding shifts:  Legislation by Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington) and Sen. Gen Olson (R-Minnetrista) would have taken an additional $430 million out of state reserves to partially payback the K-12 funding shifts enacted in the last two state budgets.  The bill was passed on largely party-line votes in both houses, then vetoed by Governor Mark Dayton.  Dayton cited the potential risk to the state budget if the economy does not meet expectations as well as the fact that the bill is not a long-term solution to repaying the shifts (there would still be about $2 billion outstanding).  Dayton favored repaying the shift by closing certain tax loopholes.  OUTLOOK:  Poor.  The two parties are a long ways off on this issue, and look content at this point to litigate the school shift as part of the campaign.

Tenure reform:  House and Senate Republicans passed bills that would end the practice of laying off teachers using the Last In, First Out (LIFO) methodology.  Instead, the bill mandates a combination of seniority and teacher evaluations.  The bill is currently in conference committee, and is expected to be re-passed by both chambers shortly.  Gov. Dayton has already announced his intent to veto, saying it would be premature to pass laws dictating requirements for layoffs based on teacher evaluation standards that are not in place yet.  OUTLOOK:  Shaky.  Again, there seems to be a difference here that will be difficult to bridge.  Most people agree about ending layoffs solely based on LIFO, but question whether this bill is the right way (or whether this is the right time).

PEIP changes:  Legislation authored by Rep. Joe Hoppe (R-Chaska) would change the process for education unions to enter the Public Employees Insurance Program  (PEIP).  Currently, if a majority of eligible union members approve, the union can enter PEIP.  Under the legislation, additional approval by the employer (in this case, the school district) would be required as well.  Versions of the bill have been passed in both houses, and are currently in conference committee.  Re-passage by both houses is expected before the end of the session.  Additional legislation that would prevent new groups from entering PEIP for three years is also in conference committee.  OUTLOOK:  Hazy.  Hoppe’s bill passed on a party-line basis, while the second bill had slightly broader support.  Given his positions on other bills, it seems unlikely Gov. Dayton would sign Hoppe’s bill.

Omnibus education bill:  A number of policy reforms are included in the omnibus education bill.  Among them are early graduation scholarships, which would reward students who graduate from high school early by helping to fund their post-secondary options.  The Republican bills would fund said scholarships by taking the money from their school district.  Also included is the call for a state report card on each school, prohibitions on political activities by school employees on public property, an extension on the ability for school districts to transfer dollars between funds, and allowing districts to use general fund dollars on all-day kindergarten programs.  OUTLOOK:  Possible.  The funding of the early graduation scholarship could be problematic, but it is an issue that ought to be able to be worked out if the two sides are truly serious about getting a bill passed.

Legislative Watch, Schools, State, State Legislature
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mcd3

Chaska Herald column, April 5, 2012: City needs to stick to the plan

April 5, 2012 by seanolsen 0 Comments

Below is the commentary I wrote for this week’s Chaska Herald:

There has been significant angst expressed in the Chaska Herald’s letters to the editor and in various online forums about some of the recent happenings in the city’s business environment.  Let’s put a little perspective around some of these events.

In January, the abrupt closing of the Chaska Rex movie theater again raised concerns about the viability of businesses in downtown Chaska.  Letter writers in the March 15 and March 22 editions of the Herald called for more attention from the City Council, media outlets, and residents to the situation.

The challenges that downtown Chaska faces didn’t just develop in the last couple of years; it’s been an ongoing process for a long time.  I haven’t lived here as long as many of you (nine years and counting now), but one letter writer pointed out significant business closings downtown going back to the late 1980s.  People can and will go back and dissect things the City Council did or didn’t do, ways society has changed, and ways our community has changed to determine why things developed the way they did.

But what we need to focus on as a community is: how do we go forward from here?  Many of the critics point the finger at the City Council.  I’ll certainly agree that the Council has at times seemed slow to recognize or react to the problems downtown.

The Downtown Master Plan should change that equation, though.  The final chapter of the document sets out a number of guidelines for implementation of the Plan.  It is critical that the Council and city staff follows the prescriptions in that Plan and start addressing some of the “low-hanging fruit” that can provide immediate benefits to the downtown community.

I’m hopeful this can occur.  A few years ago, questions about parking downtown would be answered by references to statistical studies that showed that their formulas said there was more than enough parking downtown – ignoring the real facts that people don’t park their cars based on statistical studies.  Now, the city seems to understand that if people think there’s a parking problem, then there’s a parking problem.  Perception is – in cases like this – reality.

The Plan calls for annual action plans to be created and published, so the public can be aware of how progress is being made on these objectives.  Key things that can be done now include:  improving signage in and around downtown and across Chaska to funnel people to the downtown region, continue work with key partners (like Southwest Metro Transit) to improve parking options downtown, and develop marketing strategies and collateral for attracting businesses, customers, and tourists to downtown.

A great deal of time, effort, and taxpayer expense has gone into the creation of this Plan.  It is up to us as citizens to hold city officials accountable for carrying through and making the changes prescribed in the Plan, however.  It is also up to us as citizens to recognize that the city can’t do everything on its own.  The city can do much to make Chaska an attractive place to own and operate a business, but it is ultimately up to those business owners to elect to invest in Chaska.

This point brings us to the second event that concerned some in our community:  the approval of the building of a second McDonald’s location in the city.

Everybody has got their own personal favorite restaurant or retail store that they’d love to see in Chaska.  From Taco Bell to Whole Foods, from IHOP to Trader Joe’s, just about every name has been bandied about by someone.

In the end, though, what we would like has to bump up against the reality of who wants to make the investment in our community.  The Hazeltine Plaza development was platted in 2006 to have up to three small- to medium-box sized retail stores next to Kohl’s, plus two small Chaska Commons style strip malls that could each hold up to nine businesses each, plus two fast-food restaurant pads.

Yet, Kohl’s has sat up there alone since September 2008.

It would be nice to turn up our noses at a second McDonald’s because there’s a long line of other companies willing to snap up that spot and build there instead.  But, unfortunately, that isn’t the case right now.  And yes, there’s concern about whether or not this area can support two McDonald’s.  On the other hand, no company has a better record of picking sites across the globe than they do.

So, let’s welcome McDonald’s investment in Chaska and hope that their example inspires others to follow.  With hard work and cooperation across our city, we can build thriving business communities in downtown and on top of the hill.

Chaska, City Administrator, City Council, Downtown Issues, Economy, Restaurants
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