A couple of Saint Paul legislators, operating under the cover of both darkness and mayoral complicity, tried to ram a stealth tax increase through the Legislature:<\/p>\n
\u00a0Without any public notice or testimony, a Minnesota House-Senate conference committee voted around 3 a.m. Monday to authorize the St. Paul City Council to levy a 3-percent sales tax on food and alcoholic beverages sold in the city’s bars and restaurants, starting Jan. 1. <\/span>The full Senate then voted early Monday evening to kill out the food and beverage tax amendment, which had been slipped into the big end-of-session tax bill.<\/span>When word of the tax increase proposal circulated Monday, response from opponents was swift.<\/span>“We’re already maxed out on our drink prices compared to the surrounding communities,” said Dan O’Gara, owner of O’Gara’s Bar and Grill. “This tax increase could kill the (hospitality) industry in this city.”<\/p>\n
The legislation would have increased the tax on beer, wine and liquor sold by the drink in St. Paul to 12.5 percent<\/strong> from the current 9.5 percent. The sales tax on food sold in city restaurants would jump from 7 percent to 10 per cent<\/strong>…The tax was never proposed in a bill, so St. Paul bar and restaurant owners never got a chance to tell legislators how it would affect them, [Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association executive director Jim] Farrell said. “It’s the sleaziest thing I’ve ever seen.”<\/p>\n
Mayor Coleman?\u00a0 Sure, he’s all for it:<\/p>\n
While the tax was her idea, Moua said Mayor Chris Coleman and some City Council members vetted it privately. “Nobody likes to impose a tax, but they didn’t object,” she said.<\/p>\n
Coleman was tight-lipped about the proposal, but said for the second year in a row the city of St. Paul is looking at a gigantic hole in its budget.<\/p>\n
“We’re continuing to work hard for local government aid to deal with our $16 million deficit,” Coleman said, referring further questions about the sales tax measure to Moua.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Coleman sorta summed up the culture shock involved here;\u00a0he and the Gang of Four extreme liberals who dominate the Council ‘s primary goal is to work for government<\/em>, as opposed to working for the governed.\u00a0 <\/em>The mission, to these people, is to ensure government is sustained by any means necessary.<\/p>\n
Even sleazy ones.<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/blockquote>\n<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A couple of Saint Paul legislators, operating under the cover of both darkness and mayoral complicity, tried to ram a stealth tax increase through the Legislature: \u00a0Without any public notice or testimony, a Minnesota House-Senate conference committee voted around 3 a.m. Monday to authorize the St. Paul City Council to levy a 3-percent sales tax […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","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=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}