Greetings,
I hope you can make it out for the upcoming “Monster” Mike Schultz Day in Kimball. A parade will take place 1 p.m. Sunday, May 6, followed by a party at the Willow Creek Park shelter. This should be a great event was we officially welcome home Monster Mike after winning gold in this year’s Paralympic Games in Pyeongchang.
We received good news from St. Paul this week as the Minnesota Supreme Court this week sided with legislation I led to enactment allowing counties to contract with private accounting firms to conduct their required audits. State Auditor Rebecca Otto sued multiple Minnesota counties over the constitutionality of hiring private firms to perform audits instead of adhering to the default practice of having the auditor’s office do the work.
The provision at the center of the case was one I authored that was enacted into law as part of the 2015 State Government Finance Bill, which received significant bipartisan support and was signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton.
It’s great that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of counties and taxpayers on this case. Otto wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in an effort to maintain her monopoly and control over counties and their taxpayers.
In last week’s email I touched on a bill (H.F. 118) I authored to bring asset testing to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That bill was the subject of a House hearing and a wealthy member of the public exposed how our broken system allows even a millionaire to receive government assistance.
While I am pleased a citizen helped shine some light on this issue, I was shocked and dismayed at the poor treatment he received from House members. Mr. Undersander deserves to be thanked for doing taxpayers the favor of raising awareness on this issue, but coverage from the Legislature’s nonpartisan news service tells a different story. It tells how legislative decorum was lost and describes how committee members “yelled, interrupted each other and gesticulated.”
Mr. Undersander’s audit of SNAP cost the federal government $6,000 in assistance paid to him. It may have cost 10 times that amount for the state to conduct a similar audit – and Minnesota taxpayers would have been stuck with that tab.
Everything Mr. Undersander did is legal and he does not deserve to have legislators hurl insults at him and even go as far as to say he should be criminally prosecuted. That’s embarrassing conduct from the House and can only serve to discourage public participation in the process.
I again want to emphasize that we aren’t trying to throw people off SNAP. The goal is to make sure people who need assistance are getting assistance, without having taxpayers pay for assistance to people who are not in need.
It is important to protect assistance for people such as farmers who might find themselves in a tight spot. Tweaks to the bill are in the works to help avoid overwhelming counties with audits. Collaboration is taking place alongside counties and agency officials to protect those in need and only asset test those where questions may arise.
Let’s not focus on Mr. Undersander and instead turn our eyes to the question as to whether asset testing would help protect taxpayers. With so many unknowns, a learning process needs to take place and that is a top goal with this bill. No formal action was taken during the hearing, so we will see what happens next.
In other news, this week the Department of Revenue came out with a tax incidence report of the governor’s supplemental budget plan. The report shows the governor’s proposal would raise taxes on Minnesotans of every income level and make Minnesota’s tax code more regressive, a huge departure from what he has been telling us.
The analysis – from the governor’s own agency – says that households making less than $32,000 would be hit hardest by the governor’s proposal. The governor has proposed reinstating more than $1 billion in health care tax increases, repealing tax reductions enacted last session and numerous changes reacting to tax changes at the federal level.
The House is in the process of assembling its own supplemental budget and the tax portion of that should be made public very soon. Our focus will continue to be on returning the state budget surplus to Minnesotans in the form of real tax relief, while also holding Minnesotans harmless as much as possible as we adjust to significant changes in the federal tax code.
Good luck,
Jeff