Synonyms
By Mitch Berg
Last week, Lori Sturdevant’s synonym for “raising taxes” and “paying for DFL gigantism” was “Ideas”.
Here’s hoping the word “ideas” survives the brush with duckspeak.
But we move onward. This week, Ms. Sturdevant – the DFL’s highest-ranking PR flak in the Twin Cities, albeit one working undercover as a “columnist” at the Strib – tries to hijack the word “leadership”:
“Minnesota’s Leadership Drought” was the topic suggested to the dinner speaker at the Nov. 8 annual meeting of the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities.
Gives you a clue about the mood of this state’s midsize city mayors this fall, doesn’t it?
Why, yes. Yes it does.
One might suspect that “mood” could also be expressed as “we miss the good old days, when we could count on the redistribution program called “Local Government Aid” to camouflage our spending, rather than to jack up taxes and take accountability for doing it ourselves“.
Onward:
The six mayors and one mayoral stand-in who came to the Capitol Thursday were no more charitable about the quality of leadership they’ve encountered of late in and around Cass Gilbert’s dome.
Their complaint: They are on the brink of enacting big property tax increases and cuts in city services next year — and they wouldn’t be in that ugly spot, if the Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty had come to terms on a tax bill last May.
Well, to be accurate, the “terms” were pretty clear; no new ones.
It’s the likes of Sturdevant and the DFL (pardon the redundancy) that seem to be unclear on the concept.
Pawlenty, being the guy with the “no new taxes” reputation and the power to call a special session, came in for the most pointed mayoral prodding.
“It just takes the governor doing what mayors do every day, and that’s bring people together and lead,” said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.
Well, to be fair to Pawlenty, he is leading. The assembled mayors (only two of whom are named in the piece, since we’re on the subject of “accountability”) just don’t want to follow.
Which is their right – they were elected on their platforms, which, one might guess (and one would have to guess, since only Cook and Rybak are named), of providing more “services” but letting other people pay for them.
Strange, isn’t it, a few others muttered when the tape recorders were off, that a governor so resistant to state tax increases is so cavalier about city taxes going up and up.
Cavalier?
Hardly – or so I hope. The small-government conservative in me hopes Pawlenty is on a considered path of pushing the bill for the gigantism of DFL-clogged city government back where the policies are set – in the various DFL-clogged City Halls of this state.
But I’m nothing if not an optimist.
November 19th, 2007 at 7:42 am
When I read that column, I thought that Pawlenty was exercising leadership, but that the mayors were not. It is the mayors who should be exercising leadership by telling their constitutents that if they want all these “wonderful government services, then they will have to pay for them, and not expect others to pay for them.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:11 am
the DFL’s highest-ranking PR flak in the Twin Cities, albeit one working undercover as a “columnist” at the Strib
Not to be confused with Kersten, the MNGOP’s highest ranking PR flak also working undercover as a “columnist”. And the scare quotes have more to do with acknowledging her as a writer, when in fact most of her stuff resembles an MDE post *laughing*
November 19th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Not to be confused with Kersten, the MNGOP’s highest ranking PR flak also working undercover as a “columnist”.
Sorry, Flash. There’s no real comparison.
Kersten is quite overtly the “conservative columnist”. Her politics are an integral part of her print identity. Nobody reads Kersten thinking they’re not getting a conservative commentator.
If you were to ask Lori Sturdevant if she is the photonegative of Kersten, she’d probably be mortally offended; five’ll getcha ten she still thinks she’s a detached, objective “journalist”.