The Times editorial board chastises the Legislature for not putting their forks down.

Traditionally, major bonding bills are debated and drafted in sessions when legislators are not focused on setting the state budget. In other words, next year.

The governor clearly took that approach when he proposed $71 million in capital improvements this year. But what the heck happened in the DFL-controlled House and Senate?

The House passed a $290 million plan. The Senate OK'd a $320 million bill. Under the spirit of compromise, we would have thought the governor would be asked to sign a bill amounting to somewhere between his request and the Senate's big number. Instead, House-Senate conferees upped the ante to $334 million — even more than the Senate's request.

Sorry, but that's not even close to a reasonable compromise.

And it's noted that the inability to compromise has given Governor Pawlenty the whip hand currently, according to the StarTribune. The domestic partners benefit got kicked to the curb by the Legislature without much of a fight. That's a real kick in the pants to the faculty union which made it a centerpiece of its legislative agenda for this year.

But giving the governor too much credit isn't the way our newspaper works.

Sadly, we make the same point about the governor's continued defiance to proposed tax increases of any kind.

We note again that Pawlenty said during his campaign he would not be beholding to "no new taxes" pledges and the divisive partisanship they invoke. Well, whether it's gasoline or income taxes on only the wealthiest state residents, the governor to date has proven his fall campaign pledges to have been nothing more than political hot air.

But what does that pledge really mean? He didn't pledge to raise taxes, he only pledged that he would not rule out a tax increase under some possible states of the world. The current state of the world, however, is a $2.2 billion surplus and an economy projected to allow almost 10% in new spending over the next biennium without an increase in taxes. At what point did he pledge to accept more than a 10% increase in the budget??

The reason the governor has said no to the gas tax has been because he is willing to use the new MVST money for bonding those expenses. The Legislature wants to bond for their pork but tax for roads. The governor's threatened veto of the income tax increase is, contra the Times, the tax increase will be shifted to the poor in higher prices and depressed wages and lost jobs going over the border to lower-tax states. If the Legislature thinks the tax system isn't progressive enough, why use the money to pay the ransom to Education Minne$ota? Why not take Laura Brod's proposals and cut the tax rate on the lower end of the spectrum?

Because it isn't about fairness.

It's about the pork.

Labels: legislature, Minnesota, Pawlenty, St. Cloud, taxes

I shot a note out to Rep. Steve Gottwalt after seeing that he had missed the vote on the smoking ban (something he was voting for) and the tax debate about which he was passionate. I worried something was not OK. Saturday night I found out that his mother-in-law had passed away on Friday unexpectedly. The funeral is here in St. Cloud tomorrow. Our prayers are with Steve and Paula.

Labels: Gottwalt, St. Cloud

In his weekly signed editorial, St. Cloud Times editorial page editor Randy Krebs is asking what businesses are willing to pay for education.

For the past several years I have regularly heard from leaders of influential business groups that among the biggest challenges they face in Minnesota is a shortage of qualified workers.

Now it seems logical to me that this shortage must be at least partially due to the state's education system. After all, Minnesota businesses essentially hire people after they have had adequate education and training, the bulk of which comes from the state's birth-to-12 and higher education systems.

So if this system is not providing these workers, I would think businesses would be among the loudest voices calling for the state to amend its education system so that potential job applicants are qualified, so they can be hired, so those businesses can have the best chance at succeeding.

It is true that businesses complain about the lack of qualified workers. I've said it myself, both on this blog and in various issues of the Quarterly Business Report. (Full disclosure: Randy's paper publishes the report.) Though I again warn people that what businesses mean often when they talk about qualified workers includes problem-solving skills that don't come from formal education (a few manufacturers say they look for young people from farm backgrounds, where improvisation is a necessity), and often about basic skills like showing up for work on time, dressing neatly, etc. It isn't necessarily about K-12 education.

But surely part of it is. And businesses HAVE been among the loudest voices. And they do pay more. The problem is that what you want in return is accountability. Where is the evidence that these additional dollars spent (per student, inflation adjusted) have produced better results? If they haven't, why haven't they. Krebs asks,

And while I'm not so naïve to believe "more money" is the main answer to what ails education, I've also had enough recent school experiences to see that this state is trying to provide a 21st century education using a funding engine built in the 20th century.

Indeed, if businesses want to avoid a tax increase so badly, how come they are not lobbying so intensely (if at all) to amend state funding formulas to improve outcomes?

You know if their businesses had such problems they would make changes.

They would, but having devoted so much money to this outcome, they might have decided adding money isn't the problem. They might have chosen to reallocate dollars. Perhaps you will not find the analogy so apt, but I see this quite like Jim Souhan's piece on the Vikes and Wolves: You can't spend more money and hope that fixes the problem.

Businesses are willing to invest money to solve a problem when they are convinced that the money spent will actually solve the problem. We spend more and more dollars and get more and more mediocrity. At some point, like the Twins or the Wild, you decide that's enough and time to go in a different direction. Last I looked, those were the teams in the playoffs.

When you get results like this, the answer shouldn't be to bury an income tax increase in the education bill.

Labels: education, legislature, Minnesota, St. Cloud, taxes

Three Saturdays ago, I said as the Minnesota Senate left town that they would pass their tax increase under dark of weekend and then go out and get the local papers and the trade unions and teachers and all to beat drums in favor of it.

The Sunday St. Cloud Times outdid itself yesterday. I can barely talk about Edith Rylander's column, except that I believe she's the Edith Archie Bunker really was talking to. Her logic goes like this: Government bought something, it did some good, so government spending is good. The thought that it might be provided for less, or provided better, never enters her meathead. Forget convincing her that government spending builds dependency, she's already gone around that bend.

I gave the column by Randy Krebs attacking Steve Gottwalt a comment here. But I'd like to add something that more belongs on this blog than on a comment, regarding what I see as the education of a freshman legislator.

Recall back to last fall, when Steve Gottwalt and Diana Murphy-Podawiltz vied for the seat in 15A. I covered a debate of theirs, and at the time I said this about Gottwalt:

He is much more a moderate than I thought before, particularly on fiscal issues. While even a moderate stands out against the backdrop of DMP, Steve is nonetheless one to argue for smart, careful fee or tax increases. I was the one who wrote the "name a place that grew after raising taxes" question, and he correctly said "none." But in other places as you see in my notes, he was in favor of higher auto license fees, for MVST -- he and I have sparred on Northstar in the past, as he has a preference for spending programs for transportation. He's much more positively disposed to JOBZ and other business tax incentive programs than I would be.

I heard more of him over the last two months of the election and I saw nothing that changed my view that he wasn't altogether hawkish on tax increases -- just that he wanted accountability. That matched his behavior as a city councilor: Pragmatic, willing to put money into things he can show get results.

Now if one wanted to take a very narrow view of what's happened since then, one might say he hasn't changed a thing. He may still favor tax increases if they come with real accountability. But one very annoying thing about this legislative session is that none of the spending proposals have accountability to them. The education bill is a gigantic pork train; the governor's call for merit pay for MnSCU has fallen on deaf ears. Find a bill that has an accountability component.

I say "he may still favor..." because I don't know. I haven't asked him. But based on what he's been saying lately, I think perhaps he's learned that government is never accountable. As Reagan once said, government is like a baby, "an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other end." When he gets Cy Thao breathing on him, or Tarryl Clark speeding past him in a town hall meeting (notice how long those things lasted as bipartisan events?) or tries to talk compromise in a committee passing a sex ed bill and gets rolled time and again on party line votes, or ... well, at some point it becomes time to check your premises. Again, I haven't asked him, but I'd say Rep. Gottwalt has indeed changed. He's received an education in partisanship, a new experience for him vis-a-vis the St. Cloud City Council. (Not that the latter isn't partisan, but not to the extent the legislature has become.)

As John Maynard Keynes once said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" The facts of this Legislature have changed. The DFL is now in charge of the House, and it seems hellbent on spending and taxing and not asking the GOP for any input. So my question to Randy Krebs is, was Steve just supposed to sit there and take it?

Maybe he's just learned that there's no midpoint between right and wrong, and the DFL's tax plan is wrong in kind, not just in degree. If that's what Gottwalt has learned, he's shown more intelligence than the St. Cloud Times.

Labels: Gottwalt, legislature, Minnesota, St. Cloud

This month's offering is about the presence of a substantial Somali community in St. Cloud, motivated by a comment someone made about the lack of ethnic restaurants. She's utterly in love with that restaurant now -- she'd be a lousy food critic, because she likes anything that's new -- but mostly because the people who run the place are marvelous and because she learned a great deal about the country in the process.

One of the commenters notes that we have a disproportionate amount of Somalis in St. Cloud, but immigration patterns are almost always clustering in nature.I was hoping Mrs. S would get more of an answer to why the Somalis chose St. Cloud, but the best we can learn is that families called other families and said this was a nice place. Most of the Armenians in California relate the area's climate and geography to be similar to their homeland. That's not true of St. Cloud and Somalia.

Labels: St. Cloud

(That's my attempt at an MSM headline -- blah.)

Area bloggers -- leading off with a St. Cloud blogger I don't know yet, more on him in a minute -- are featured on page one of the St. Cloud Times this morning. It has that sort of "heard of these new-fangled blog thingies?" feel to it, as if many of the Times readers never heard of them before. I suspect my fellow Cloudians are real hepcats and dig the blog thing already. I rely on this Pew study from last year on who blogs and who reads them. I can tell you that, though the usual perception is of a young person blogging his or her personal life to friends and acquaintances, the bloggers who are represented in Kirsti's story don't fit the mold. For one thing, I believe Larry Schumacher is the youngest of the SCBA bloggers (Mr. Lee, drop a note or leave a comment if that would not be true when you join ... and yes, that was an invitation) and I'm pretty sure he's above the median age of bloggers. Most of the bigger bloggers in MOB, too, are north of the big 30 (I'm the senior citizen of SCBA but the Powerline guys are a few years older than me.) And SCBA and MOB are both more full of political bloggers than the blogosphere more generally.

For those finding this blog for the first time thanks to the Times, there was an interview of me as a blogger (and radio host) a few years ago by Doug Williams that I still think was well done, even though it reads a little too stream of consciousness. In short, I wasn't thinking of this as a political blog when it started, but between the friendships built, the radio program created, and the drifting away of the other Scholars, that's where it is. Thanks for stopping by.

Labels: MOB, NARN, SCBA, SCSU, St. Cloud