Telling One Third of the Story

Our friends in the SD35 DFL blog bring us the sob story of the tiny city of Freeport MN.

It seems like you aren’t the only one thats feeling squeezed these days.

Just when you thought you had heard it all, the little City of Freeport Minnesota has sent the State of Minnesota a bill for $71,600.03! It all started back in 2003 when the State decided to cut back Local Government Aid. Like all the cities and counties, Freeport lost about a third of its annual aid.

Then the City of Freeport did improvements in 2005 that it would normally assess the State for, which it did. But the State refused to pay. The little city of 517 near Albany in Central Minnesota feels stretched so it sent out a bill.

The policies pursued by the Pawlenty administration and adopted in 2002 and 2003 have greatly impacted Minnesota municipalities ever since. Not suprisingly, SD35 Representatives Mark Buesgens and Mike Beard supported the policies that now plague local governments.

They then refer their readers out to this story from the MN2020 website. One minor problem is that the MN2020 story is rife with hyperbole, inaccuracies and complete fabrications.

There is a whole lot of this story that they (Sd35 DFL and MN2020) don't tell you. Like the fact that the LGA cuts started when the state was facing a $4.1 billion deficit! There was a lot of belt tightening that needed to be done in 2003 - either that or we pass that debt on to our children and grandchildren which the Democrats claim to be against when it is a Republican (like President Bush for example) doing the deficit spending. The other thing that they don't mention is that there was a special formula that was designed FOR cities like Freeport (pop. 517) so that they did not take the financial hit (as a percentage of income) that the bigger cities took. Instead of taking the 9.7% hit that most bigger cities took, cities with a population under 1000 people would get hit with a 0% to 2% deduction! In 2003 (for example) Freeport's LGA payment was $87,091 and in 2007 it was $79,438 - a decrease of roughly $8,000 in 4 years - not the $18,000 a year that MN2020 claims! So if they are passing on a $71,600 bill to the state for the last 4 years, I am thinking that the problem can be found more with the city council of Freeport then with anyone in St. Paul!

Regarding the "Main Street Project" I want to know why it is the city of Freeport feels that it is the responsibility of the taxpayers of Scott County (or Dakota County or Hennepin County for that matter) to pay for their repaving projects. Other cities pay for their repaving projects - why can't Freeport do the same?

The last and probably most important thing that our DFL friends left out had to do with this last legislative session. You see, last session, when the DFL had control of both houses of the Legislature they had the opportunity to fix this "iniquity". Instead of "fixing" the problem House File 3149 (authored by Rep. Anne Lenczewski (DFL_Bloomington) made it worse. The "new" formula actually reduced the amount of aid that went to cities like Freeport! I don't hear our friends at the SD35 DFL blog chastising the DFL leadership for THEIR part of this problem. I can't imagine why the left THAT important tidbit out of their story....