Robbing St. Peter to pay St. Paul

Lots of fun stuff today kids....

There may be hope for Twin Cities media. The St. Paul Pioneer Press takes Mayor Coleman to task today while at the same time pushing the cry for the need of Local Government Aid.

"St. Paul will get $60 million in state aid this year - and complained about not getting more. But 26 east metro suburbs will get nothing from the state, despite growing problems with blight."

Whether the Met Council likes it or not, the suburbs are growing. A lot of people are moving out of the cities (and first ring 'burbs) because of crime and blight and decreasing property values. The inner city DFL'ers have chosen LGA as tool to "punish" those of us who fled.

"The 2007 Legislature passed a tax bill that would have provided a $70 million increase in state aid to cities, but suburbs would have received little of that money.
When Pawlenty vetoed the tax bill last month, city officials in St. Paul, Minneapolis and numerous outstate communities cried foul. But few suburban officials complained. "

Just like they did with the K-12 Education funding bill, the inner city Democrats made sure that their communities got all the money, to heck with the rest of the state. However, there has to be a "logical" reason for them doing that, right?

"Suburban officials and lobbyists cite two reasons why suburbanites aren't getting much property-tax relief from the state.
There's a perception problem, said New Brighton City Manager Dean Lotter: "Folks at the Legislature view any suburban community in the metro area as a wealthy city."
But that isn't the case, Lotter said. Some first-ring and fully developed suburbs are struggling.
"Not every suburb is an Edina, an Eden Prairie or a North Oaks," Lotter said. "

Now, I can not complain too much. When the Logical Husband and I bought our home here in the Savage lands, we knew that our little town would change dramatically once the Bloomington Ferry Bridge was completed and change it did. In the last 10 years, the population of our little town has skyrocketed and a lot of those homes are "executive homes"...homes that start in the low $300,000 range. While our humble little abode is not valued nearly that high, the value has increased with the growth.

That said, our city government has not been shy about complaining about a lack of LGA. Not one city in our county (or in our Congressional district for that matter based on the chart in the article) receives LGA and there are a couple that certainly could use it. However, because the perception is that our whole county is "rich" (the wealth is mostly contained in small pockets of the county), the Legislature thinks that we don't "deserve" the money.

LGA was derived as a "relief" for skyrocketing property taxes across the state. However, as we saw this session, rather than statewide property tax relief, LGA has been used to city against suburb and suburb against rural towns.

Maybe what we should do (in order to do away with the inequality) is to get rid of LGA entirely and finally learn to make our cities and municipalities learn to live within their means. Just like the citizens of this state do.