{"id":13372,"date":"2010-09-09T07:18:22","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T12:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13372"},"modified":"2010-09-09T07:36:59","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T12:36:59","slug":"the-dayton-dustbowl-blood-from-a-turnip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13372","title":{"rendered":"The Dayton Dustbowl: Blood From A Turnip"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Demko, writing for Finance and Commerce<\/em>, reaches many of the same conclusions<\/a> that I reached on Tuesday’s series fact-checking the Dayton budget “plan-<\/a> and comes up with one that I missed :<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The final plank of the DFLers tax-the-rich proposal involves a crackdown on tax deadbeats. According to the Office of the Legislative Auditor, roughly $1 billion in taxes goes uncollected each year. During the last biennium, the state revenue agency spent $20.2 million to collect $133.7 million in outstanding taxes, a return rate of $6.60 for every $1 spent. Dayton\u2019s plan counts on collecting an additional $400 million in unpaid taxes by upping the enforcement budget to $60.6 million, theoretically netting the state approximately $340 million.<\/p>\n

But financial experts see a problem with that calculation: The rate of return on enforcement activities is almost certain to drop as more tax scofflaws are chased down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Demko, being a liberal partisan, pays the plan his complients and takes a whack at Emmer as well. \u00a0But our bottom lines are pretty much similar:<\/p>\n

The bottom line on Dayton\u2019s proposed plan to make the state\u2019s richest residents pay their fair share of taxes? It\u2019s unlikely to result in $4 billion worth of additional revenues for the state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, the DFL’s been howling for months about Emmer’s lack of a “plan”; Demko is no exception:<\/p>\n

Even so, financial experts give the DFLer high marks for actually presenting a reasonably detailed plan for solving the looming cash crunch. By contrast, Republican nominee Tom Emmer has yet to provide a credible breakdown of how he\u2019d balance the state\u2019s books, although he\u2019s ruled out tax increases.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the party out <\/em>of power doesn’t need a complete plan with perfectly-dotted-I’s and crossed T’s. \u00a0They need a vision that convinces people they have a better idea. \u00a0The plan matters next February.<\/p>\n

Still, Dayton’s not getting quite <\/em>as smooth a ride as one might expect.<\/p>\n

Gary Gross also commented<\/a> on Demko’s piece.<\/p>\n

The reporters who\u2019ve been reflexively characterizing Sen. Dayton\u2019s plan as detailed didn\u2019t do their homework. In fact, I\u2019d argue that serious people couldn\u2019t characterize Sen. Dayton\u2019s submission as a plan, much less a detailed plan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We’ll keep working on it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Demko, writing for Finance and Commerce, reaches many of the same conclusions that I reached on Tuesday’s series fact-checking the Dayton budget “plan- and comes up with one that I missed : The final plank of the DFLers tax-the-rich proposal involves a crackdown on tax deadbeats. According to the Office of the Legislative Auditor, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dayton-dustbowl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13372"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13386,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13372\/revisions\/13386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}