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State Representative Debra Kiel
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-5091
For more information contact: House GOP Communications 651-296-5520
OP/ED COLUMN
Column By Representative Kiel
Legislators wrapped up the budget bills late Tuesday evening and Governor Dayton signed them into law Wednesday morning.
Republicans have said all along that we do not need a tax increase to balance the budget and Governor Dayton agreed by dropping his tax increases. Governor Dayton began this debate pushing for the highest income tax rate in the nation and a $4.1 billion tax increase. Republicans defeated every attempt to raise taxes. The final budget maintains General Fund spending at $34 billion.
The budget that was passed this week reforms government in a number of ways. Reducing future spending is an important part of this budget. If we do not begin to reform government, we will grow so quickly that we will not be able to keep up and at some point could find ourselves in a similar situation as the federal government is in now, in a hole so deep we can’t get out.
Our budget includes some of the following reforms:
We were able to reduce spending in the next biennium by $2.5 billion. A couple bills I would like to highlight include Education and Taxes. The final Education bill spends $13.6 billion and some of the reforms include: teacher evaluations, principal evaluations, providing early education scholarships of $4 million. Another important reform in the Education bill is that the state is not allowed to steal from school districts reserves for cash flow as well as a 9 percent increase over the biennium for special education.
In the Taxes bill we were able to make a permanent statutory reduction to LGA, while also funding LGA at the 2010 levels unless cities were certified for less already. Just for clarification, some folks will attack the Tax bill because they say property taxes will go up. Raising property taxes is up to each city’s local officials, state government cannot raise your property taxes. The Tax bill also provides tax incentives to encourage data centers to be located in Minnesota, creating quality jobs for Minnesotans.
These bills that passed this week bring many reforms to state government, and although this plan was not perfect, the shutdown needed to end. When both parties need to compromise, no one is going to get everything they asked for, the governor had to give a little and so did we, and it was an outcome everyone could live with.
I look forward to session next year, where we can continue to reform government and make sure that Minnesotans are getting the best for their tax payer dollars. I ran on the platform that we need to reform government, and now we are slowly getting there, it will take time, but it is time worth spending to make sure our kids and grandkids can grow up in a brighter and better Minnesota.
Sincerely,
Deb
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