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The primary mission of society is to keep goverment at all levels supplied to its satisfaction.
Well, no, that's absurd. Or at least, so think most of us.
But to Jeff Van Wychen of MN2020 - writing an "op-ed" at the MinnPost? Maybe not so much:
Since last December, Gov. Tim Pawlenty has unilaterally cut state investment in Minnesota's counties by $144 million using his unallotment authority.
Let's strive for accuracy here; Governor Pawlenty has cut spending. Government doesn't "invest", except in the most gauzy, metaphorical sense of the term.
After the 2010 unallotment announced in June, general purpose state aid to counties in 2010 will be nearly 20 percent less than the amount certified to counties in 2008 and nearly 29 percent less than the 2002 aid amount. And this is before taking into account inflation and growth in county population.
Which, depending on your point of view, means one of two things:
- Counties are getting screwed
- Given inflation (which is another word for "increases in salaries and costs of living") and population growth, counties' abilities to raise their own money for their own spending has risen.
But in Minnesota, we are saddled with a fuzzy, soft-focus myth; the "Minnesota Miracle".
In the late sixties, Minnesota was a sleeping giant whose alarm clock was ticking toward "wakey-wakey" any way you sliced it; while outstate Minnesota was poor and underperforming, we had a highly-educated, stable, hard-working population, a top-flight university, immense natural resources, and a powerful industrial, manufacturing, technological and management culture (centered in the thriving Twin Cities metro area, in which much of the state's wealth was concentrated). Minnesota was poised for growth, and would likely have grown immensely without government intervention.
And so the state embarked on an epic program of social engineering, redistributing money from the Twin Cities (which at the time were the state's success stories) to Greater Minnesota. "Local Government Aid" was the vehicle of this redistribution; it set government - led, we must point out, by a coalition of gigantistic DFLers and a Republican minority even more cowed by decades of post-New-Deal politics than the GOP in the rest of the nation - up as the regulator for a massive money shift...
...which was coupled by the establishment of almost unfettered power in the state's urban cores, the Twin Cities and Duluth. DFL leveraged their immense power, and the financial oomph of immense money-laundering, accountability-obscuring engine that was LGA, to turn the state's major cities into spending engines and social engineering laboratories; the Twin Cities became warehouses for the poor, and welfare-state hothouses that, inside a generation, because net consumers of resources, even given the frequent booms - the sixties, the eighties, the nineties - that swept the region.
During that time, successful feckless DFL administrations used the LGA shell game to jack up spending to unprecedented levels, without having to be accountable via directly taxing their own (few remaining taxpaying) constituents to pay for it.
And then, to balance a budget knocked askew by generations of DFL profligacy, Governor Pawlenty told the counties "start passing your costs directly to your consumers, rather than laundering it through the state".
Which brings us back to Van Wychen:
While some reduction in county aid was inevitable given the size of the state's budget deficit during the FY 2004-05 biennium, the scale of the cuts forced deeper budget cuts on counties than state government made. Thus began a trend by which Pawlenty shifted the state's budget problems disproportionately to counties (along with cities and towns) and property taxpayers.
"Disproportionately?"
What would be "proportionate"? The obvious answer - to those not cursed with a Democrat's innumeracy - is for a county to provide 100% of what it spends.
Minnesota politicians have been bred out of the "local accountability" business, though.
There have been two major effects of the cuts in county revenue imposed by the state over the last eight years. First, county budgets have shrunk. Total real per capita county revenue is projected to drop by 7.1 percent from 2002 to 2009, which is greater than the decline in state revenue net of transfers to local governments. This is an indication that the budget balancing measures taken by the state have hit counties harder than they have hit state government.
Alternate explanation, for those who don't believe "funding government no matter what the consequences" is the proper mission of government; counties have had to adjust their spending to account for reality - that they are less able to fob their profligacy off on the state.
A disproportionate share of the state's budget problems have been shifted on to local governments, causing property taxes to increase at the same time that funding for local services and infrastructure falls.
No, Jeff Van Wychen; a disproportionate share of the counties' budgets were pushed up to the state to finance an epic DFL power grab; the curtain's been cast aside, and the counties are having to deal with reality.
Responsible state leadership is needed to honestly deal with the state's fiscal mess rather than merely shifting the problem to counties, cities, and schools.
Better idea; responsible leadership is needed at all levels - especially the gabbling, spendthrift State Legislative level, but also at the counties, cities and schools - to stop treating the taxpayers' wallets as entitlements. Keeping government running is not the primary goal of a free people..
Cross-posted at Shot In The Dark, where comments are solicited.
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