Ever since Governor Pawlenty went down the unallotment route, the DFL has been “warning” that property taxes, inevitably and perforce, will rise.

Gary Gross points out the vacuity and dishonesty of that statement:

I’d love asking Mr. Entenza or these mayors whether they eliminated or reduced spending on wants to pay for the needs. I’d love asking whether the cities thought about doing things differently first instead of immediately raising taxes. I’m betting that the majority of them didn’t.If these cities’ property taxes were raised without the mayors and city councils rethinking their spending or without reforming the delivery of essential services, then the mayors and city councils are to blame, not Gov. Pawlenty. That either makes Mr. Entenza a blowhard who’d rather blame others for his ineptitude or he’s the type of candidate that refuses to think outside the box to protect Minnesota’s taxpayers.

Either way, his behavior in this is unacceptable because there’s no suggestion that he’ll deviate from the DFL playbook of raising taxes first. We already have too many tax-first DFL ‘leaders’. We certainly don’t need another in St. Paul.

Here’s a question to ask your city council and mayor, wherever you live (in Minnesota. All you non-Minnesotans can sit this one out.  For now.  Maybe); why, whenever talk of cutting Local Government Aid (aka LGA, Minnesota’s redisstribution of wealth from the parts of the state that pay their way to the cities) is there talk of cutting the city’s only really essential services – police and fire.  Are you saying they are financed through Local Government Aid, a transitory form of funding?  Why not fund the city’s real essential services with the city’s property taxes, and other revenue that’s not dependent on any other political body? Wouldh’t that be the responsible thing to do?

If your city is funding the real essential services with LGA, and paying for Human Rights Departments and Community Councils with property tax revenue, someone needs to ask “why?”