GOP pummels DFL budget outline

04/24/2005

Conrad Defiebre, Star Tribune
April 24, 2005

Minnesota’s biennial state budget battle was joined in earnest last week as Senate DFLers unveiled their so-called “targets” for $900 million in new spending, most of it on education, and Republicans in the House, Senate and governor’s office immediately used the proposal for target practice.

No tax plan accompanied the DFL budget outline, but a few Senate majority members floated their ideas for income and liquor levies, which the GOP gleefully pounced on. A sample, from House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon: “Their budget should come with a warning sign to taxpayers: Open up your checkbook; we want lots more of your money.”

Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, said the tax bite would be no more than $1 a day for adult Minnesotans, and well worth it to preserve the state’s schools and health care.

Tax-averse House Republicans, meanwhile, pushed ahead with another casino plan they hope could bring the state $300 million in licensing fees and at least $164 million a year from operations. The initiative, unveiled late Friday, would put two new casinos with thousands of slot machines each at Canterbury Park in Shakopee—one for the racetrack, the other for two northern Indian bands.

With the nearby Shakopee Mdewakanton band’s Mystic Lake casino already the state’s largest, the Minnesota River area of Scott County would be on its way to becoming Vegas in the Valley.

House Republicans also scuttled a plan from Rep. Mary Liz Holberg, R-Lakeville, to raise by a nickel the state gasoline tax, stuck on 20 cents a gallon since 1988, if voters approved in 2006. But the House transportation finance bill does have a few revenue-raisers in added fees for driver’s licenses, vehicle titles and registration tabs.

And, in perhaps the biggest surprise of this legislative session, the House overwhelmingly exercised a “nuclear option” on cold medicines as part of a crackdown on methamphetamine. If the bill sponsored by Rep. Jeff Johnson, R-Plymouth, makes it into law, decongestants such as Sudafed would be banned in Minnesota just as Johnson’s campaign for attorney general heats up next year.