\u00a0Property taxes are spiking — especially in her St. Paul district — and there’s no boost in state aid for cities. The Legislature will help rebuild flooded southeastern Minnesota, but it couldn’t pass a bonding bill to meet other infrastructure needs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Unmentioned by Sturdevant (presumably because it’d make her hagiography of Hausmann less…hagiographic; the bonding bill failed because Hausmann tried to use it to float a raft of DFL pork into the budget, and Local Aid to Cities is nothing but a subsidy of Hausmann’s and the DFL’s failed urban policy that is best amputated.<\/p>\n
Hausman heads the House Capital Investment Finance Division — the bonding panel. That should give her a lot of say about broken bridges, stalled traffic, polluted water and the like.<\/p>\n
It should — but too often, she said, it has not. Too many decisions, bonding and otherwise, have been left to a discordant trio — the Republican governor, the Senate DFL majority leader and the House DFL speaker.<\/p>\n
That must change, Hausman said. “The day of three leaders sitting in a room making decisions for us is over,” she said.<\/p>\n
We will not let gridlock between three leaders be the defining point of government in Minnesota. We all represent our constituents. We don’t represent our leaders.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Interesting, isn’t it, that Sturdevant presents Hausmann’s statement in its full populist glory, without noting that that is exactly what Governor Pawlenty is doing<\/em>.\u00a0 Representing his constituents; the majority in Minnesota, the one that elected him and his tax-hawk platform.\u00a0<\/p>\nSo it’s fair for Hausman, but not fair for Pawlenty?<\/p>\n
(Just a rhetorical question.\u00a0 We all know the answer…)<\/p>\n
The column gets worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You’ve been warned.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m amusing myself at the moment by pondering this question: How would Lori Sturdevant describe a leader among conservatives, one who was unswerving in his devotion to conservative first principles and in their forwarding in the Legislature?\u00a0 Someone like, say, Michele Bachmann or Phil Krinkie were, when they were in the State Senate?\u00a0 Or like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,144,4,2],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bridge-collapse","category-governor","category-media","category-minnesota-politics","tag-pawlenty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371","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=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22605,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions\/22605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}