Lourey: Tax plan serves ‘common good’

08/24/2006

She says opponents can’t fund promises

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

State Sen. Becky Lourey proclaims new taxes are required to meet Minnesota’s needs in education, health care and other vital services, and on Wednesday she chided her leading gubernatorial rivals, Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Attorney General Mike Hatch, for ducking debates and failing to tell voters how they would pay for their campaign promises.

During a speech on fiscal policy at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute, Lourey, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate for governor, said she offers “an honest, straightforward approach” to taxes and spending — and suggested the GOP- and DFL-endorsed candidates do not.

“Tim Pawlenty and Mike Hatch are refusing to debate before the Sept. 12 primary,” she said. “Perhaps they aren’t entirely comfortable with their similar approaches to the state’s fiscal situation.

“We hear a lot from the candidates about making the necessary state investments in education, health care, public safety and transportation. At the same time, they are pounding the no-new-taxes theme. Which promise will voters hold them to?”

Pawlenty has said he can fund his new initiatives with higher-than-expected state tax collections, and Hatch said he would raise revenue by cracking down on tax cheats and closing corporate tax loopholes.

That was Lourey’s only reference to her rivals by name. She devoted most of her speech to defending a plan she unveiled last month to increase taxes and spending to improve public services.

Under that plan, she would increase Minnesota’s top income tax rate on the wealthiest earners and reduce taxes on the working poor through enhanced tax credits.

She would boost the gasoline tax by 5 to 10 cents per gallon and finance public transit systems with a “carbon tax” that would impose higher registration fees on vehicles with lower fuel economy.

On the benefit side, she would offer small businesses a tax credit for health care that she contended would enable them to provide insurance coverage to all employees in two to four years. She would stabilize state funding for public schools with a new property tax levy based on each school district’s wealth. And to combat crime, she would provide state public-safety aid to cities and counties with high crime and traffic accident rates.

In recent years, Minnesota has started to abandon its long tradition of “moving our society forward for the sake of the common good,” Lourey said. Taxes on the wealthy have been cut while the burden was shifted to moderate- and low-income families through increases in fees, property taxes and tuition, which are “typically paid most heavily by those who can least afford it.”

She said her proposed income tax increases for the wealthy and tax breaks for the poor would restore fairness.

“Í am the only candidate for governor in 2006 to once again embrace the Minnesota tradition of fair tax policy for the sake of the common good,” she said.