GOP looks to buy votes

Minnesota Republicans -- if they win the unnecessary legal dispute they created by calling the tobacco tax a fee -- want to use some of the revenue to provide a one-time payment to homeowners billed as "property-tax relief."

Great Plains View has a succinct opinion on the matter.

Me, I have a handful of thoughts:

1. A one-time payment is not "relief"; it's a bribe. Restoring cuts in state aid to cities is "relief."

2. Scheduling the payments to arrive three weeks before the general election is not coincidence. Nor should anyone be surprised that if the GOP doesn't win their unnecessary lawsuit, they can still claim that they "tried" to provide tax relief -- but those activist judges on the Supreme Court thwarted them.

3. Relief might not be necessary if the GOP-led state government hadn't decided to balance its budget by pushing costs down to counties and cities, forcing them to raise property taxes -- which, by the way, is one of the more regressive forms of taxation.

4. We've been down this road before, with Jesse Ventura. He rebated the state's rainy-day fund to taxpayers -- just before the economy turned south. When that rainy day came, we had no fund to help cushion the impact.

Prudent financial management says you put some money away in good times in order to help you get through the bad times without huge increases in taxes. Prudent financial management also says that if property taxes are a problem, you address the problem on an ongoing basis, not with a one-year stunt.

If the GOP is so concerned about my property tax bill, they can address their own starring role in its growth.

property taxes, tax relief, Minnesota, politics, midtopia