Hutchinson offers plan to pay for government

08/11/2006

Cost would be set, then priorities listed

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

Peter Hutchinson, the Independence Party’s endorsed gubernatorial candidate, says Minnesotans are getting a bad deal for the price they pay for government.

In the past three years, they have been paying more in taxes and fees and getting less in public services, he said Thursday in a speech on the “price of government” at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Hutchinson, a public affairs consultant who previously was state finance commissioner and Minneapolis public schools superintendent, outlined a new way to pay for government.

He called for scrapping the current way of setting budgets, which generally just adds to or subtracts from the status quo.

Instead, he said, as governor he would determine how much government should charge citizens — they would pay roughly the same as they do now — then set priorities that produce the results citizens want and finally choose who can do it best at the lowest price.

For 32 years, the average price of state and local government in Minnesota has consistently hovered around $16.50 per $100 of personal income.

After the income tax cuts of property tax reforms enacted between 1999 and 2001, the price dropped to $15.40, he said. But since then it has risen to $16.20, mostly through increases in property taxes, fees, charges and tuition.

But the results Minnesotans are getting from government have gotten worse, he said. Health care costs are rising, more people are uninsured and fewer than one in four ninth-graders graduate from college. More than one-third of college freshmen take remedial courses, roads are in the worst condition in 20 years and 10,000 lakes and rivers are polluted, he added.

“We ought to expect more, and we ought to get more,” Hutchinson said. “But we will not get there by riding the same dead horse that got us here. It’s time to dismount and head off in a better direction.”

The direction he envisions would require state and local officials and citizens to get together and decide what price they are willing to pay for government, then find ways to get the most for their money and finally set priorities for what results they want in such areas as education, health, transportation and environmental protection.

They would start budgeting by paying for their highest priorities and then move down their ranking list. When spending reached the price they agreed to pay, they would stop spending and lower-priority services would be cut off. Hutchinson would not say what programs might be slashed.

That approach has worked in other states and local jurisdictions where he has been a consultant, he said, and it can work in Minnesota.

Hutchinson’s speech at the Humphrey Institute was the third in a series by major party gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidates. Two more candidates for governor, Democrat Becky Lourey and Republican Sue Jeffers, are scheduled to speak later this month.