Guest Editorial: “Bell that cat!”

02/11/2005

Article from the Southwest Review

David Brauer

A few years ago, I was the Minnesota correspondent for Newsweek
magazine. It was a great gig covering compelling people, but the most
interesting person may have been my boss, John McCormick.

In person, McCormick is a blithe spirit, amiable even to the lowliest
freelancer. Professionally, I called him “the shiv.” People in power
thought they had gotten away with something - until they felt John’s
metaphorical knife between their ribs.

His most infamous piercing was of a Minnesota governor. It was John
who synthesized Rudy Perpich’s bizarre basket of personal traits into a
moniker of legendary pith: Governor Goofy.

Fairly or not, I’m not sure Perpich the politician ever recovered;
Arne Carlson beat him the same year John coined the phrase.

I thought of John the other day reading about our latest captain of
state, Tim Pawlenty. When it comes to public persona, Pawlenty is
Perpich’s opposite: placid instead of volatile, smooth instead of
rough.

When it comes to governance, though, Pawlenty is the one holding the
shiv. His acknowledged fealty to “no new taxes” results in a budget
that is mostly tricks. He embraces deficit projections where inflation
doesn’t exist; he drains tobacco-settlement trust funds and shifts
school spending into the next year. Even for the broad-based services
he’s willing to fund, he disdains broad-based taxes in favor of
exploitation, i.e., more casinos.

Pawlenty is most slickly cynical when it comes to local government.

During the Jesse Ventura years, the state agreed to take over more
education spending from the locals. That shifted education costs from
local property taxes to the statewide income tax. The deal also cut
property taxes on businesses, apartments and high-value homes. Middle-
and low-income homeowners would pay a greater share of property taxes,
but since overall property taxes would drop, those homeowners wouldn’t
pay higher taxes.

A few wise politicians opposed this for a simple reason: if the state
didn’t adequately fund education, funding would fall right back to the
property tax - and this time, the folks with the least would pay more.

And that’s exactly what has happened. Since he took office, Pawlenty’s
foot has been on the educational windpipe. Despite rising heating
costs and employee medical-insurance premiums - the state froze per-pupil
funding for two years and last year cut $185 million from special
education, limited-English and preschool programs. (Pawlenty proposes
a 2 percent per-pupil hike this year, which is still below inflation.)

The governor gets to keep his no-new-taxes pledge, and if local school
boards don’t want to wish inflation away, they get to raise the taxes.

Except they can’t; state law limits local school taxes unless there’s
a referendum. (This, too, is clever - businesses, landlords and
well-heeled homeowners pay a lesser share of referendum spending than
they do of property taxes.) Minneapolis, in fact, is at the local tax
cap, and thanks to a Byzantine state formula, actually had to lower
the school rate even though citizens might tolerate paying more.

For a moment earlier this month, Pawlenty crawled toward
responsibility. He floated the idea that local governments be free of
the tax limits. Sure, it still shirked the state’s education-spending
responsibility, but at least let locals inflict their own pain.

Then, in his State of the State speech Jan. 18, Pawlenty’s
irresponsibility again burst forth. He proposed - perhaps with a smirk
- that taxpayers get a postcard with their local tax statements. If
enough people sent the postcards back opposing the proposed tax levy, it
would trigger a referendum that could undo the spending.

Now, this is slapstick stuff that should be taken more as political
theater than sound public policy; red meat for the anti-tax crowd that
has absolutely no chance of passing.

But the ridiculousness should not pass unmocked. We already have a
referendum on people who set our tax rates - they’re called elections.
The cost of a new, needless local campaign would of course be born by
the locals. And four years after the Florida presidential vote and a
few months after Ohio, while Mary Kiffmeyer still rules the state’s
election machinery, we want people to send in a postcard to trigger all this.

I’ll tell you what; I’ll support a postcard trigger for taxes if
Pawlenty will mail a postcard on the first day to trigger a
referendum forcing higher state per-pupil aid.

Pawlenty is a slick dude, but he’s reached the level of chief
executive lunacy that demands a telling label. In other words,
it’s time to bell this cat. With apologies to John, here’s my
suggestion:

“Governor Gimmick.”