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Senate District 66 News |
| September 2006 |
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SD 66 Web pages:
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by Senator Ellen Anderson
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| Senator Ellen Anderson |
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The last few years have been a mixture of hope and disappointment. We were able to secure a few small victories despite a Republican Governor and House. I was the chief author of several bills that passed into law, including the following:
In addition, I led the successful fight to fund improvements to Como Park (including the Zoo, Conservatory and Visitors’ Center), Phalen Corridor, and to support St. Paul’s new Bioscience Corridor.
But, despite these victories, there were also many disappointments, most of which were due to the fact that, together, Republican Speaker Steve Sviggum and Governor Tim Pawlenty outnumber the DFL-controlled Senate.
To give you an example, I was the chief Senate author of the 2006 Energy bill, which would have required Minnesota utilities to generate at least 20% of their electricity from clean, renewable sources by 2020. The bill passed the Senate, but House Republican leaders refused to allow a vote on it in the House. This bill would also have strengthened programs to conserve energy and to help low and moderate income people cope with the high cost of winter heat.
One of the most disheartening events was the action taken by Sviggum, Pawlenty and their supporters to remove thousands of Minnesotans from health care coverage, while simultaneously raising college tuition so much that secondary education is fast moving out of reach for many of our citizens while pinching the already-strained budgets of numerous others.
Missteps like these motivate me to fight harder for our shared DFL goals! It’s my hope that if we can keep the Senate and take back the House and the Governorship, we can achieve them. In my next term, I plan to build on the work I’ve done and continue to emphasize key priorities:
The Primary election is September 12 and the General election is November 7. Between now and then, let’s work together to elect the entire DFL ticket! The party is working hard to coordinate our efforts statewide; let’s all help to keep that momentum growing!
As always, I welcome your ideas and questions.
For legislative concerns and issues, please contact me at:
Sen. Ellen Anderson
Room 120, State Capitol Building
75 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
St.Paul, MN 55155
(651) 296-5537
For campaign related concerns, please email me or my campaign manager, Erica Schumacher.
Join us on Friday, Sept. 8, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Como Park Midway Pavilion, located at the corner of Horton Avenue and Midway Parkway. (It’s just one block west of Lexington Parkway, or one block east of Hamline Avenue.)
There will be lots of food to eat, and plenty of public servants to meet! We’ll be chowing down on burgers, veggie burgers, hot dogs, beans and chips. Come meet your representatives, other endorsed candidates, and your fellow concerned citizen-neighbors. Who said politics can’t be fun?!
by Lee Helgen, St. Paul City Council member, Ward 5
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| Council member Lee Helgen |
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Now that the Mayor has submitted his budget proposal to the City Council, it is our job to review the recommendations, reprioritize, make needed adjustments, and set the maximum property tax levy for the City of Saint Paul. (The County Board and the School Board establish their property tax levies separately). By mid-September, the Council must act to establish a maximum tax levy amount. Once the basic budget parameters are in place, the City Council has until Dec. 15 to work out the final details of budget.
So, how did we get to this point of having such a large budget gap? As you may recall, Gov. Pawlenty signed the “No New Taxes” pledge. The Governor’s adherence to this ill-advised policy and previous tax cuts for upper income wage earners resulted in a significant budget crisis at the state level. As part of the State’s budget solution they reduced Local Government Aid (LGA), which is a key property tax relief measure. Since 2003, the City of Saint Paul’s LGA has been reduced by $72 million. By way of example, the 2007 LGA amount is $16.2 million below the 2003 funding level. The Republican Governor and his Republican allies in the Legislature deliberately pursued an agenda of shifting the tax burden from the income tax to the property tax. The result of this strategy is reducing taxes for high income wage earners and shifting the costs to moderate and low income families who pay relatively more in property taxes.
In addition to the negative impact of state level funding decisions, Saint Paul’s previous two mayors, Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly, also failed to adequately respond to budget pressures by holding to the politically expedient position of a “zero” net increase in the City’s Property Tax levy for 12 years. The impact of these decisions is that the City of Saint Paul expended the available budget reserves, repeatedly reduced services, and implemented a number of new fees and assessments. As costs continue to rise and demand for City services grows, the policy decisions of the past are haunting us now as we struggle to maintain quality services at a reasonable price.
by Toni Carter, County Commissioner, District 4
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| Commissioner Toni Carter |
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Although I am fortunate enough not to have an opponent this year, I’m not taking Saint Paul voters for granted. I’m running an active campaign focused both on generating large margins across my district for our entire statewide ticket and on engaging historically disenfranchised communities in the work of democracy.
I very much look forward to continuing the important work we’ve done together at Ramsey County to build a progressive future for all of us, including:
Working together in 2006 we can create the future we want to see!
by Janice Rettman, County Commissioner, District 3
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| Commissioner Janice Rettman |
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I am delighted to share with you that I have an uncontested race for re-election as the District 3 Ramsey County Commissioner. I am humbled and pleased to have the opportunity to continue to serve. My pledge is to continue to vigorously represent my area. I will continue to doorknock the area I represent during the campaign season focusing on energizing the public to vote and registering new voters. My campaign is planning some events in the fall where we can gather together, and I will be attending many other gatherings this summer and fall. I will be working in both the ice cream and donut booths and attending the Fourth Congressional Executive and Central Committee meetings as well as the Senate District 66 meetings. Special thanks to the District 66B DFL House Club for your campaign contribution and for all the volunteer dedication found in both the 66A and 66B Clubs in organizing and fundraising efforts to achieve victory in November.
The DFL offers people a choice where all citizens are encouraged to get involved in community and to be a part of the solution personally, in their neighborhoods, state, nation, and on the political scene. Whether you are involved in my campaign or another DFL endorsed campaign, thank you for giving of your time and talents. Know that it is critical at this time in our nation’s history. I look forward to seeing you on the campaign trail.
by Juanita Lewis, SD 66 Chair
Greetings, Senate District 66! I’m pleased to be your newly elected chair. I want to take this time to thank the past chair, Erica Schumacher, for all of her hard work and dedication.This is going to be a very exciting and busy year for the Senate District. We are working to help Get Out The Vote for the statewide candidates. There have already been a series of door knocks and different events that volunteers from the district have been a part of. The response has been great and all the work rewarding.
We have a chance as Democrats to make some major changes not only in our district, but for the entire state. There is a lot of energy around right now and we want to channel it, and keep it going. We have a great team of precinct captains and a wonderful executive board ready to work hard.
by John Lesch, State Representative, 66A
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| Representative John Lesch |
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Minnesota neo-cons understand that State Attorneys General will be the vanguard in that Democratic army which retakes America in the next 10 years. This, for the following reasons. First, the only individuals who have struck at the root of the Reublican power base are those who knocked the wind out of (or outright killed) their golden gooses: Worldcom, Enron, Global Crossings, Tycho, Jack Ambramoff, Tom DeLay. It takes the mind of an experienced District Attorney to unweave those complex flowcharts which fuel the oligarchical agendas of neo-con concertmasters. The seminal example of this is Elliot Spitzer in New York. Corporate boardrooms dab their foreheads when his name is mentioned. Why? Because he is one of the only Democrats in the country who has been able to decipher their byzantine balance sheets and legitimately question their bogus GAAP facades. Billions are made and lost every day on razor-thin margins, the machinations of which are incredibly complex and are understood by none but a handful of very rich individuals (there is, of course, a reason they’re that wealthy). Spitzer, however, gets it.
No one, but no one, since Teddy Roosevelt has been brazen enough to strike at the heart of the beast in the way Spitzer has. Sarbanes-Oxley was mostly a watered-down euphoric. One thing it did do is call attention to rip-offs perpetuated by whitecollar criminals. It kept their complicated ruses in the news long enough for people to get their heads around the issues.
The second reason AGs are critical is this. Neo-cons have finally begun to recognize (where old fashioned conservatives always failed) that the U.S. Constitution protects rights with which they fundamentally disagree. This is because even Supreme Court Justices appointed by THEIR PRESIDENTS (e.g. Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush I) had the nerve to read the law of the land. A glut of Supreme Court decisions, from the 1950s through today, have hamstrung conservative electoral gains on issues like the right to choose, school desegregation, corporate accountability and environmental regulation. Hence, neo-cons have recognized that their fetid jihad on behalf of the idle rich is quickly losing steam. How will they revive it? Why, by calling in the lawyers, of course. A perennial glass ceiling on fascist success in this country has always been the lawyers.
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| Rep. John Lesch and supporters at the Rice Street Parade |
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So, they have grown more sinister. They have even stopped relying solely on confirmation fights before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the last ten years, conservative legal groups akin to the Federalist Society have been infiltrating the nation’s law schools, even insofar as building NEW law schools with a focus on “faith and values.” We have one of them right here in Minneapolis — the University of St. Thomas Law School — completely underwritten and bankrolled by the overwhelmingly wealthy and conservative institution (which has recently been making news for maligning their own faculty members who are in same-sex unions). There are several other law schools in the nation, started in the last seven years, which follow the same pattern.
This is important because those graduating classes of lawyers help guide the overall jurisprudence, which is spearheaded by the nation’s AGs. I will cite one example, that being Gideon vs. Wainright (1963). The Florida AG at the time solicited the nation’s AGs to sign on to a brief Amicus Curiae (friend of the court) arguing against giving indigent defendants free counsel — assuming they, as all overzealous prosecutors, would readily jump on board. But one independent young AG by the name of Walter Mondale read his letter and bucked the trend. He organized 22 of the nation’s AGs to actually support Gideon. Today it is the law of the land, yet still under constant attack by neo-cons. This movement is driven by decades of courtroom losses by conservatives, even during times when their electoral power surged.
The left will begin its rise with that trite but true phrase, “America will only be free when the government attacks crime in the suites with as much vigor as it does crime in the streets.” The nation’s Attorneys General are the cavalry of the new left. If we don’t use them, the neo-cons will nullify them.
by Alice Hausman, State Representative, 66B
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| Representative Alice Hausman |
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In most cases, I would agree with those who say that budgeting by Constitutional Amendment is not a good idea. However, there is a major reason why transportation is an exception. We already constitutionally dedicate the gas tax and license tabs to roads and highways, thereby creating an uneven playing field for transit. We are far behind other states — our economic competitors — in the development of public mass transit systems.
Further, we have no local match for federal transit dollars, so billions of federal tax dollars have gone to other states that are building transit systems. There was a time when 80 percent of a rail transit corridor was paid by the federal government. That percentage is now down to 50 percent. Were we to pass this constitutional amendment, with 40 percent dedicated to transit, we would have that local match. We would no longer have to fight the political fight each year to get large amounts of state money dedicated to a transit corridor.
Highway construction costs are skyrocketing in the metro area because of right of way costs and other issues. There is ample evidence that, when a region tries to solve its congestion problems with only roads, it fails. If our metro area grinds to a halt with congestion, there will be consequences to our economy. That hurts the whole state. It is in the best interest of ALL regions of the state to work cooperatively to assure transportation choices.
Greater Minnesota’s aging population needs transit systems if they want to continue to live independently in smaller communities. Metro citizens want transit options as an affordable, less stressful, and environmentally friendly alternative. And if those federal transit dollars come to our state, state dollars in a healthy economy will be available for education, human services and all of those causes near and dear to us.
Some are currently opposing this amendment because, they say, it will leave a hole in the general fund. We ought, instead, to be asking, “Is this a good solution to a problem?” For metro voters, I want to suggest a reason why this fight is the right solution. If we don’t pass this amendment, we still need a local match for those hundreds of millions of federal transit dollars. The solution that some have proposed is a half-cent sales tax: yet one more regressive tax to be imposed on metro taxpayers.
We are ONE Minnesota. Our solution should reflect that. Passage of this amendment assures that we will continue to balance interests of metro and rural, roads and transit. I would welcome your phone call if you want to discuss this issue.
by Gloria Zaiger, Campaign Manager for Rep. Hausman
The election is less than 100 days away and we have lots of fun and easy things you can do to make a difference in this election. This district has enough Democrats to sway the statewide races, and to influence the outcome in our “adopted” district, SD50B for Kate Knuth. Here are some things you can do:We are so very lucky to have a person like Alice representing us, but her vast experience and skill can’t be put to full use with a Republican Governor and a Republican majority in the House. Help us bring change to Washington D.C. and our state capitol.