Tax and Tax-But-Call-It-A-Fee
The Lillie News website has gotten a whole bunch of Maplewood dirt online at last, giving us the opportunity to link to the goods! (And conveniently refreshing our memories about meetings and topics we watched but didn't blog at the time...)
Aren't the Triumvirate supposed to be the "low taxes" crowd? Yet we see that they voted authorization to increase our 2007 taxes by 11.4%. Rossbach and Juenemann abstained (citing the lack of information in the pathetically brief budget document thrown their way by Interim Manager Copeland). Cave, Hjelle and Longrie voted for the levy -- perhaps due to their blind faith in Copeland as their reliable stooge (so why sweat the details?), or maybe they've actually reviewed all the plans in greater detail and came to their conclusion in meetings outside of the public eye (which would be no surprise, given their history of flouting the open meeting law).
Taking a page out of the Pawlenty handbook, they're also interested in raising more money by calling it "fees" rather than "taxes." By hiking the electric franchise tax they can squeeze more money out of everyone on the power grid in Maplewood -- and to the average person it will look like Xcel is the one dipping into their pocket, not Mayor Longrie.
Of course, given the likely increases in cost due to things like severance pay, wrongful termination and related lawsuits, plus the cost of whatever new friends of the mayor need to be added to payroll, it should come as a surprise to no one if the city needs the added funds to balance its budget.
More on that topic later...
Aren't the Triumvirate supposed to be the "low taxes" crowd? Yet we see that they voted authorization to increase our 2007 taxes by 11.4%. Rossbach and Juenemann abstained (citing the lack of information in the pathetically brief budget document thrown their way by Interim Manager Copeland). Cave, Hjelle and Longrie voted for the levy -- perhaps due to their blind faith in Copeland as their reliable stooge (so why sweat the details?), or maybe they've actually reviewed all the plans in greater detail and came to their conclusion in meetings outside of the public eye (which would be no surprise, given their history of flouting the open meeting law).
Taking a page out of the Pawlenty handbook, they're also interested in raising more money by calling it "fees" rather than "taxes." By hiking the electric franchise tax they can squeeze more money out of everyone on the power grid in Maplewood -- and to the average person it will look like Xcel is the one dipping into their pocket, not Mayor Longrie.
Of course, given the likely increases in cost due to things like severance pay, wrongful termination and related lawsuits, plus the cost of whatever new friends of the mayor need to be added to payroll, it should come as a surprise to no one if the city needs the added funds to balance its budget.
More on that topic later...
posted by Frostbrand @ 8:44 AM
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