Dear Friends and Neighbors,
My 2016 Legislative Survey is now available to take online, giving me another opportunity to gather valuable feedback from my constituents in Chisago County.
To take the survey, just click this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Barrett2016
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. Also, don't forget to share it with your friends and family in District 32B!
Met Council Transportation Bill
The great train robbery in Minnesota turned out to be the almost $400 million that taxpayers have doled out for Northstar Commuter Rail, a heavily subsidized form of transit that continues to fall well below expectations in revenue and popularity. Just 1,200 people use it each day and total revenue from fares has reclaimed less than $15 million of the total costs of the system since its opening in 2009.
A majority of Minnesotans use cars to get to work, and most in Chisago County drive very long distances each day to work. I want to make sure that public transit systems operated by the Met Council including Northstar, light rail and others are cost effective and don’t spend any more of your tax dollars than necessary.
I presented my bill, House File 2508, to the House Transportation Committee this week. This legislation would require that the Met Council make sure that fares from mass transit riders cover an increasingly larger percent of their operating costs. Currently, just 27 percent of the mass transit costs are covered by fares. My bill would gradually require this to increase by 5 percent a year until 2020 when they would need to fund 50 percent of their operations. If the Met Council does not meet these goals, they must pay out half of the revenue shortfall as a penalty to the Trunk Highway Fund to be used on our roads. An employee of the Met Council testified during my committee hearing that they have not raised fares on these systems since 2008. Even though operating costs have increased during the past 8 years, they don’t want to raise fares because they believe it would result in fewer people using the system.
The goal of my bill is to encourage Met Council to become more efficient, whether that means reducing operating costs, raising fares, eliminating unpopular routes or working to capture more riders.
Roads and Bridges
Some believe the only way to invest in roads and bridges is to increase the gas tax (which hurts us in Chisago County greatly because of the 100 mile commutes many have), and others continue to erroneously claim that because gas tax revenue is declining because of more fuel efficient cars (it is not). I believe we can accomplish our transportation goals without a gas tax increase—a tax that would make Minnesota a national leader in gasoline taxes.
Some ideas I have include:
- End the diversion of car related taxes, like the motor vehicle sales tax (MVST) and rental car tax and auto body services to transit.Over $1 billion dollars in MVST has been diverted from use on roads and bridges since 2008. The 2007 constitutional amendment that required 40 percent of MVST to pay for transit was (some say intentionally) poorly worded.A clear question to the voters like “should 100 percent of the motor vehicle sales tax be used to repair roads and bridges in Minnesota” would result in your tax dollars being used more appropriately without raising your taxes.
- In total, tax dollars received from Minnesota taxpayers like you have padded the state’s checkbook by over $8 billion since 2011. If transportation is as important as politicians say it is, let’s back those statements up by requiring a certain percentage of future increases in tax dollars to be used for transportation (roads and bridges). If just 10 percent of all increases in the state tax revenue increases were dedicated for transportation improvements, well over $1 billion dollars would have accumulated since 2011 with additional dollars coming in each year going forward.
Of course a final option is to continue not using tax dollars appropriately and more productively and just raise the gas tax, a very regressive tax, that hurts low and middle income Minnesotans the most. I believe this is a very, very poor option.
Reining in MNsure
As Vice Chair of the Taxes Committee, I am always working to reduce your tax burden and put more money back in the pockets of Minnesota families. Earlier this week, our committee voted on legislation to lower health insurance costs for individuals, families and small businesses who purchased health coverage through MNsure.
The bill would reduce the premium withhold tax for insurance plans sold through MNsure, cutting them from 3.5 percent to 1.75 percent starting in 2017. Additionally, with MNsure continuing to struggle to meet basic operating standards like mailing out 1095-A tax forms on time, the bill would require our health care exchange to meet certain operation benchmarks or risk an additional tax decrease to 1.5 percent in 2018 and any future year where those goals are unmet.
In all, the bill could save Minnesotans at least $15 million on health insurance premiums over the next two years and is a way to rein in this bloated, inefficient bureaucracy that oversees the health insurance exchange.
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Sincerely,
Bob