Paying a Premium for Childlike Treatment

If you're like me, you LOVE IT when the all-wise legislature takes your tax money and spends it on things that you will not know about until it's too late:

Some of Minnesota's biggest unions and construction companies are pushing a plan to use state loan guarantees and tax breaks to kick-start a building industry that has been staggered by the recession. But they are keeping under wraps a list of projects that might benefit from it.

With 10 days left before the Legislature's deadline to adjourn, the plan's supporters said that key legislators had been shown a list of projects that might go forward should the fast-moving bill be adopted. The list, however, is not being made public -- a move that is raising some eyebrows over what the Legislature might be financing.

House Majority Leader Tony Sertich, DFL-Chisholm, who introduced the proposal on Monday in the House, said Thursday that he had not yet seen the list of projects.

Sertich: "Hey everyone; vote for my thing! What's in it? I don't know!"

Dick Anfang, president of the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council, said the list of possible projects would not be released because doing so would release proprietary information, such as what land parcels an individual developer might be buying to build on. "It may never be released," he said.

I'm always more comfortable when a big labor boss decides whether or not any taxpayers will know anything about on what things their tax money is going to be spent.

(House Taxes Committee chair Ann Lenczewski) said the tax increment extensions in the bill could be expensive for taxpayers, and could amount to as much as $1 billion in diverted property taxes at a time when communities may need increased revenues to fund their budgets.

Wow, what a GREAT time it is for that!

"We should be doing what we can," said Sertich. "Not everything in the bill is popular, and not everything in the bill will probably gain the support of the governor and the Legislature."

Not everything in the bill will be popular with THE PEOPLE either, you fink, but who will know until it's too late since this whole thing is a payoff to big labor? The Minnesota legislature - now there's a governing body that is open, accountable and can be trusted to make any manner of decisions about my like FOR ME!!

Just keep walking through your lives like a zombie, Minnesota; we're in very good hands when the legislature is in session.