By Rep. Paul Anderson
The two main items produced by the Legislature during its recently completed session were the bonding bill, along with tax relief in the form of two separate pieces of legislation. The first of those dealt with the repeal of the highly publicized business to business taxes, including the tax on farm repairs, the tax on telecommunications equipment, and the sales tax on warehousing or storage. The first two were in effect for nine months before being repealed in April, while the warehousing tax never did go into effect.
During its short duration, the sales tax on the labor portion of farm repairs brought in around $10 million. Since this tax should never have gone into effect in the first place, its repeal should have been made retroactive, and that $10 million should have been refunded to farmers.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t, and the repeal date was set at April 1 going forward.
The second tax bill passed during the session dealt with additional refunds and credits for those who either own houses or rent, along with those owning homesteaded farmland, and will result in checks being sent out by the state later this year. The timing of those checks, termed by some “Jesse-checks,” in reference to rebates sent out while Jesse Ventura was governor, is a bit unusual. They will be issued in mid-October, just weeks before the fall election.
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Parts of the district were hit with torrential rains over the weekend. Reports ranged up to nine inches north of Belgrade and eight inches around Greenwald. Parts of the golf course at Albany, located along I-94, were underwater. I drove around the district and observed the damage done to farm fields and several roadways. Large areas of standing water will no doubt drown out crops that had been planted there, and erosion cut gullies down hillsides as the excess water moved across the land. I crossed the Sauk River at several locations, out of its banks and spread across the land as it backed up at the bridges.
Alfalfa fields, nearly ready to be cut, were lodged down and leaning over. With the ground underfoot undoubtedly soft, it will be awhile before cutting the first crop of hay begins. That will push back the 28-day cutting schedule of alfalfa and will probably affect the feed quality of the new hay. Several farmers I visited with prior to the weekend rains had mentioned they would be starting to cut hay on June 1.
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The Stearns County Breakfast on the Farm event will be held this Saturday at the Funk Dairy, located south of Melrose. They also had their share of rain last week, with 2 ½ inches on Memorial Day and another seven inches over the past weekend. Breakfast on the Farm is an outstanding family event and gives folks a great opportunity to tour a modern dairy and see how our milk is produced, in addition to enjoying a good breakfast. People attending are asked to park at the Melrose school and take shuttle buses out to the dairy. See you Saturday at the dairy farm!
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Sen. Torrey Westrom and I will be hosting a series of town hall meetings next week, on Thursday, June 12. We will be in Glenwood, Sauk Centre, and Melrose that day. Exact times and locations will be available later.
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