For many years my parents paid for my meals. By the time I was 30, they decided they didn't have to do this anymore. I could afford to buy my own dinners.

While I was holding up a pedestrian on the street, the victim asked me why I was doing this. "Well, it's my parents' fault. They stopped buying my dinner. They had always done it, and now just because one of them is out of work and I turned 30, they stopped. What ingrates."

Of course the above story is farce, unless you're the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners.

County Administrator Richard Johnson presented a $1.6 billion budget Tuesday to the county board for next year, down about 6 percent from this year's $1.71 billion.

But even after cutting 163 jobs and reducing capital improvements, the county still needs to raise property taxes by 3 percent solely to pay increased costs at Hennepin County Medical Center, Johnson said.

Those higher costs were caused by the state's cancellation of General Medical Assistance for poor adults, he said.

Hearing that, county commissioners began their budget deliberations by blasting Gov. Tim Pawlenty again for shifting the state's budget problems to them. The county estimates that 40 percent of the state's poor adults who were covered by General Medical Assistance live in Hennepin County.

The tax increase is required "just because the governor cut the legs out'' from under thousands of low-income adults who depended on General Medical Assistance, Commissioner Gail Dorfman said.

So rather than have property owners in Hennepin County pay for the poor in Hennepin County, the people in the entire state of Minnesota should pay for the poor in Hennepin County? The county had already planned to raise taxes. Commissioner Jeff Johnson writes about the negotiations earlier this month.

I�ve heard a lot of talk the past few weeks about the needs of county government, the needs of HCMC and the needs of those who receive government benefits. I�ve heard much less talk about the needs of the taxpayers who fund county government, HCMC and the government programs that provide those benefits. I�m hopeful as we move forward toward a final levy decision in December we place a little more emphasis on the well-being of Hennepin County taxpayers.

But it's not their fault, Jeff! It's the mean parent in the governor's mansion done made them do it! When you decide it's the right of one person to live at the expense of another, it's little surprise that you make a villain of those that do not.

Labels: health care, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Pawlenty, taxes