The Strib, mirabile dictu, reaches the same conclusion I did about Dayton’s “Jerbs Bill”, although a good deal more gently in this editorial:

Last week, Dayton dressed up his biennial bonding request as a “jobs bill,” and linked it with another short-term stimulus idea: a proposed one-time tax credit for employers who hire a new veteran or recently graduated or unemployed Minnesotan before June 30, 2013.

That credit — $3,000 this year, $1,500 the first half of next year — is probably too small to convince employers to shoulder the long-term commitment that hiring entails. Dayton would do better to focus on building long-term prosperity, and to cast his bonding bill in that light.

Which is exactly what I wrote on Friday.   The tax credit – as Ed pointed out on the show on Saturday – might reinforce some larger companies’ decisions to make hires they were going to make anyway, but it’s not going to affect small-business hiring in any substantial way.

The Strib; last week’s criticism of Dayton, next week.

But they’re all aboard with the $775,000,000 bonding bill – which is actually on top of the $500,000,000 in bonds floated in the last session.  They just think it’s the wrong argument:

But the argument Dayton made Tuesday as he unveiled his wish list was backwards.

“This bonding proposal is about putting thousands of unemployed Minnesotans back to work,” the DFL governor said at the top of his media briefing.

Only after touting the short-term gain for the construction industry that comes from state building projects did Dayton add: “The bill is also about investing in the future of our state.”

It’s not often I shrug my shoulders and say the Strib got something right.  But they are; Dayton’s “Jerbs Bill” at best creates a few thousand temp jobs (almost entirely to benefit his construction union benefactors) that we’ll be paying for for the next three decades.

But the Republicans make a good point: Short-term construction job gains — even the 21,700 jobs Dayton says his proposal would create — aren’t sufficient reason for the state to shoulder 30 years of debt service.

Now, bonding is a perfectly legitimate activity for state government; we’ve always paid for our major projects with the even-year-session bonding.  If we’re smart, that bonding pays for long-term capital expenses we actually need.

So what’s the shopping list of things that’ll foster all this long-term happiness?

For example, $42 million is devoted to clean-water infrastructure projects requisite to industrial expansion.

It’s worth looking at.

Higher-education buildings, many of them sites for science and technology education, comprise 22 percent of Dayton’s recommended total.

When the Strib throws in the “…many of them…” qualifier, it means it’s time to look the bill over; I suspect there’s a “Many more of them are site for administrative deadwood and PC fripperies”.

Investing $25 million to repair local bridges draws down $50 million in federal funds while keeping goods moving to markets.

Remember when the 35W Bridge collapsed?  All the caterwauling the Dems did about the need to update the state’s most critical infrastructure?

That’s about 3.3% of the bonding bill.

And guess what is going to get exactly the same amount of money?

The biggest lever for federal and local funds is the $25 million Dayton asks the Legislature to authorize for the next leg of the Twin Cities’ light-rail network, running southwest from downtown Minneapolis.

That’s a sufficient match to net $225 million in local and federal funds, a major down payment on a 15-mile rail link between Minneapolis and Eden Prairie.

And so there’s your DFL priorities; as much money spent on a nearly-useless train (albeit marginally  more useful than the two we’re already stuck with) that will shackle Minnesotans to generations of long-term spending (expense and capital) for virtually no benefit is exactly on par with repairing the bridges that the vast majority of us use daily, and that all of our commerce depends on.

Dayton’s package is unabashedly pro-downtown — not just downtown Minneapolis, but also St. Paul, Rochester, Mankato and St. Cloud. He’s backing Nicollet Mall’s renovation, a new baseball “regional sports facility” in St. Paul, and long-postponed business-backed civic center projects in Rochester, Mankato and St. Cloud.

History teaches the value of keeping downtowns strong, Dayton said.

History may show it, but it probably won’t show it for very long.

There’s a place for bonding bills; building the infrastructure this state needs.

The Strib editorial board points out several times that Dayton’s emphasis on the plan’s dubious job benefits is a “mistake”.  Their intent is right, but their description is wrong.

The SEIU, AFSCME, Teamsters, MFT, IFO, MAPE, IBEW and the various trade unions all paid lots of good money to get Dayton into office.