On Local Government and Your Burden

The following was received in my Facebook request to be a “friend” on Saturday, Sept 25, 2010, Andy Noble wrote to Andy Driscoll on Facebook:

“Andy – I noticed you and some of your friends on Facebook, as we share some common political friends and interests. I am running for Ramsey County Commissioner against 16-yr incumbent Rafael Ortega, who has raised his own personal pay over $23,000 in the past 36 months with our tax dollars! He now makes $84,048 per year for a part-time job, while this county has an increasing deficit, lack of jobs, and ever-present foreclosures and vacancies… This embellishes what is wrong with government today, and the reason(s) some serve clearly for their own personal gain. I want to make a difference, and Ramsey County needs help – highest property taxes in the 11-county metro, and a declining population with rising foreclosures and vacancies. I look forward to staying in touch, and feel free to visit my website or contact me anytime Andy: Noble for Ramsey County Commissioner, www.NobleForRamseyCounty.com”

On Local Government and Your Burden

Open letter to Andy Noble, Candidate for District 5, Ramsey County Board of Commissioners:

Mr. Noble, while I’m always glad to see incumbents opposed, I like to see them opposed for the right reasons. Raising one’s own salary (when the law insists that they be the ones to do so) is not a reason to turn out an incumbent, unless the raises are flagrant and out of proportion to the task at hand, a task that, no matter how you slice it, is NOT a part-time job, and if you held that seat, you’d quickly see just how full time a nominally part-time job becomes overnight.

If it were up to the county board, most would create jobs overnight. But you can’t complain about jobs on the one hand and high taxes on the other  and reconcile the dichotomy. The highest property taxes in the 11-county area mean more in the face of a steady reduction in local government aids than in the commissioners desire to raise taxes.

No one, but no one, not a Democrat nor a Republican, wants to raise taxes; but let the level of county (or city) services decline, and the screaming by taxpayers across the Metro could be heard in the next three states. Slice and dice LGA levels and that push-down will push up on the other end, sure as hell. Playing the taxing game may play well with consumers and taxpayers tired of seeing their real income drop, but that is not the reason real incomes drop. Real income drops when workers are underpaid, jobs leave the country and, especially in a recession, PhD’s have to apply for jobs at McDonalds.

If we remain unwilling to even out the real tax burden across al income brackets, we will suffer at the state and local levels sufficiently to add both income and tax burdens to lower and middle-income (an no income) residents. That may sit well with more affluent people in a position to proclaim, “Let ’em eat cake!”, but until conservatives and liberals alike agree on the real state of our economy and see the wisdom and self-interest in evening out those burdens, you conservatives will never see the end of what you call the “Class Wars.” Because that’s precisely what all this has become – a duel between selfishness and community, between “Me, first” and “He ain’t heavy, father, he’s m’brother.” The former have shown they simply don’t give a damn about the rest of humankind as long as they get theirs. The latter show at least a modicum of concern for the welfare of others and that the welfare of others is the welfare of all, the more stabilizing force in a democracy.

And I haven’t even started on the undue burdens placed on communities of poverty and color, whom the revenue systems must necessarily serve disproportionately, because the rest of us refuse to pony up our fair share.

Best wishes in your futile pursuit of that commissioner’s seat. By the way, this should not be read as an endorsement of Rafael Ortega, just for sanity in governance, especially at the local level.