About Face for Hjelle?

I missed the council/manager workshop yesterday, but thankfully we have the Maplewood Citizen's League to share their notes.

What leaps out to me as truly remarkable is the requirement of Tax Increment Financing for the St. Paul Tourist Cabins project, whether or not the much-ballyhooed Met Council grant application bears fruit. I have to confess, one thing I agreed upon with Mr. Hjelle was that a lakeside spot on the edge of St Paul is not the kind of location where government should be spreading money around to give developers a helping hand. And yet . . . after making such a stink about how the cabins deal proved that the Gladstone process wasn't stalled . . . and strutting and beating his chest at great length over how taxpayer money (or the accounting equivalent thereof) was not needed to get a development on such a parcel of property . . . now we see that the plan, TA-DAH!!, involves TIF.

Our Chumpelopithecus hjelle is settling right into the role of a veteran politician. Now all we need is for him to go on camera and declare "Read my lips -- no TIF financing!" before flip-flopping right back and voting for it. Fiscal conservatism -- that's for campaigns, not governance...